


Out of Time

by lorata



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, It's a Wonderful Life, Misses Clause Challenge, Sisters, Time Loop, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8872072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata
Summary: Waverly Earp wakes up one morning to find herself trapped in Purgatory, reliving the same day over and over with no clue how to break the loop. Meanwhile, Wynonna wakes up in a Purgatory where she was never born, and where Willa and Ward are alive and killing Revenants together. While Waverly deals with the joy of the loop restarting every time she falls asleep, Wynonna can't help but wonder whether Purgatory might be better off without her.





	1. Waverly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gala_apples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/gifts).



> Dear gala_apples, I really hope you like this! Your prompt asked for plotty case-fic, and this, uh, kind of got away from me. Enjoy???????
> 
> (Note: this fits between Episodes 9 and 10 of Season 1)

The explosion rockets Waverly out of sleep. She’s out of bed and halfway across the room, bare feet on cold hardwood and the whole deal before her brain catches up, and she stands there, blinking in the mid-morning sun with her quilt wrapped around her shoulders and her braid askew.

As Waverly’s mind slowly ticks along toward alertness, maybe it wasn’t an explosion after all. She heard the noise, jolted her from the middle of a dream about chasing Revenants and being cornered while trying to sneak into Shorty’s, and she hears it now in the echoes of her mind, but — don’t explosions, well, make things _explode_? The homestead is still standing, the glass of water and the tiny sprig of lavender Waverly keeps by her bed not even jostled, and none of the windows in her room have broken and there’s no plaster dust on the floor. Maybe the sound came from the dream after all.

“Wynonna?” Waverly calls out, cautiously. Wynonna still crashes on that stupid uncomfortable bench half the time, which means she’ll have heard anything strange go down.

A long pause, several pattering heartbeats’ worth, and then —

“ _Shit_!” Wynonna yelps from the vicinity of the kitchen, and that answers that. “Shit, Wave, no, it’s fine, I just — eggs, microwave — apparently they explode, who knew?”

Waverly tugs the quilt around her more securely and pads out to the kitchen. “Uh, everyone?” she says. She can smell it now, burnt eggs and a hint of plastic curling underneath; feels the bite of cold winter air from the window Wynonna has flung open to try to air the kitchen out. “What were you doing microwaving eggs?”

Her sister stands in front of the microwave in dark jeans and a t-shirt. She spins around when Waverly crosses the threshold and holds out a bowl, face drawn in a theatrical pout. It looks empty until Waverly peers closer and spots the bits of white and yellow and fragments of brown shell. The rest of the eggs spackle the interior of the microwave, and between the mess and Wynonna’s disappointed face Waverly has to work hard to stifle her laugh.

“Seriously,” Waverly says, reaching out and taking the bowl. “We have a perfectly good frying pan.” 

“Look, fire and me, we don’t get along so well — or maybe too well.” Wynonna shrugs one shoulder. “Plus, microwaves are quick, I thought the whole point is you’re supposed to be able to cook anything in them nowadays. I swear I read about poached eggs made without a stove.” 

“You have to crack them into a bowl and stir them up first,” Waverly says absently. She scrapes the bowl into the garbage, bends down under the sink to grab a rag as Wynonna sighs and plucks the scouring sponge from the sink. “There’s too much pressure otherwise, and anyway, you’re only supposed to use low heat and check on them every —“

She stops halfway into an unneeded info-dump when she catches Wynonna’s tiny smile. “Well, anyway.” Waverly tosses her braid over her shoulder. “Seriously, why were you making eggs? I thought you were a coffee until noon sort of person.” 

Wynonna ignores her for a minute, working on a stubborn mess of egg in the back corner of the microwave. “Thought I’d make you something,” she says, half a mumble. “I know how much losing Shorty’s got to you, and while I’m not going to cry about you finally tossing Champ the Chump onto the curb, breakups still suck, so.” She shrugs. “I thought, I dunno, eggs and toast and fruit, even I can handle that. So much for my cheering you up with my superb culinary skills.” 

Waverly stops, turns to look at her, but of course Wynonna immediately busies herself with a loose thread at the hem of her shirt because that’s more important than eye contact after an admission of doing something nice. Waverly can’t remember the last time Wynonna actually sat down to breakfast as opposed to rolling out the door with her coffee and nabbing one or five of the sheriff office’s communal donut box.

A burst of affection hits Waverly, unexpected and warm, like walking past the bakery when the first morning loaves come out of the oven and the scent of bread wafts out the window. It doesn’t make up for the years apart or the prickle of jealousy every time Wynonna picks up Peacemaker and the gun responds to her command, but life is made of little kindnesses to cover the big hurts, right? Wynonna is here and she’s trying, and that puts her above most people right there.

Waverly smiles, wider when Wynonna responds with a grimace. “You put the coffee on, I’ll make the eggs,” she says. “I’ll go to the store this afternoon, and tomorrow I’ll teach you how to poach them properly. Maybe we’ll even get you up to making Eggs Benedict one day!”

“Calm down there, sparky, one step at a time.” Wynonna tosses a scoop of coffee grounds onto the filter in a dismissive gesture, but she pauses on the way to the fridge to drop a kiss on the top of Waverly’s head.

Later Wynonna heads off to work, both hands clutched around her travel mug like it contains the elixir of life instead of cheap instant, breath puffing in the winter air. Waverly stays behind, leaning against the doorway and rubbing her hands over her upper arms. As Wynonna disappears over the hill, Waverly shakes herself and steps back inside, giving the door an extra kick to close it against the wind that likes to howl over the field.

“Well,” Waverly says to herself, crossing her arms and staring back into the kitchen and the pile of dishes in the sink. “It’s morning, you’re awake, and you’re unemployed. What now?”

The cheque from Gus still sits in Waverly’s drawer, hidden in a box underneath her socks. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate the gesture, it’s — well, it’s amazing, it gives her the freedom to go where she wants, do what she wants, except what does that mean? Swimming in oceans and eating phallic sea creatures and mountain climbing and drag racing are all great, but what about the every day? Waverly has worked at Shorty’s since she was thirteen years old, only allowed to wait tables before 6pm and not touch the alcohol. Now she’s supposed to — what?

Well. Dishes first. Waverly spends a minute at the sink, hands pressed to the counter, standing on tip-toes with her weight on her arms and staring out the window, before she shakes herself and turns on the tap. The water sputters out from the faucet in hammer-like bursts, brown with flakes of mud and gunk from the tank, and Waverly jerks back and wrenches the valve closed.

“Great.” She’ll have to call someone in to look at it, and pay extra for the inconvenience and superstition of crossing the threshold of the Earp homestead. “Today started out so great, too.” 

No water means no shower means no long, relaxing soak to burn off the morning chill and the last of her post-nightmare jitters. Waverly huffs a sigh at the sink, then heads back to her room to dress. Maybe there will be a creepy Revenant causing trouble and Dolls will need her to research, which will definitely keep her mind off things.

And maybe, if she happens to swing by the sheriff’s office on the way to the Black Bade division, she’ll run into a certain pretty deputy and be able to steal a few kisses in a not _entirely_ unprofessional manner. Maybe there are some perks to being temporarily not living at Shorty’s after all.

Waverly grins. Today is looking up already.

* * *

By the time Waverly reaches the sheriff’s office, unfortunately, that little balloon of optimism has shrivelled and sunk behind the sofa to slowly deflate over the rest of the winter. A crow took a dive-bomb at her head halfway down the field, nearly causing Waverly to fall flat on her face; she stepped in a puddle next to the sidewalk when crossing into town; a car even ran the stop sign, making Waverly have to dash to avoid it and twist her ankle on a patch of ice. 

A group of kids hanging out in front of the convenience store snickers. “Very graceful, 10/10!” one of them calls out.

Waverly is not going to debase herself by shouting back at a teenager, no thank you, but she does shoot them an icy glare as she stomps past on her way to the sheriff’s office.

“Ouch,” Nicole says, tossing down a file folder onto the desk when Waverly slams the front door closed behind her. “Someone’s having a bad morning.” 

“Better after seeing you,” Waverly tosses back, smiling in spite of herself. The words leave her mouth without thinking — it’s not her fault, all right, she’s new to this, with Champ that sort of comment wouldn’t raise any eyebrows and they didn’t break up that long ago — and Waverly’s eyes go wide, but fortunately none of the other officers are within earshot.

Nicole winks, a mere flicker of one eyelid, but it’s enough to sent Waverly’s heart skittering. This — whatever this is, whatever _they_ are, is new, still flutteringly fresh and spontaneous and terrifying, and Waverly can’t tell if it’s good or bad that she really wants to vault the desk and kiss Nicole right there in the office.

But no, no, that would be crazy, they haven’t talked about going public yet or what that would mean in a town like Purgatory that still puts “the” before most races and religions, and anyway, Waverly kind of likes that it’s still new. Everything is unpredictable and spontaneous, a whole new part of her life without a proper script to follow, and Waverly can’t wait.

She smiles at Nicole, unwinds her scarf and heads for Dolls’ office, at least a little more recharged. 

Dolls has a pile of papers spread over his desk, standing behind with both hands splayed flat against the wood in a show of macho authority that Wynonna likes to roll her eyes at. Wynonna has expressed her disdain for the entire display by slouching even more dramatically than usual, leaning forward with her elbows on the table and her donut showering powdered frosting on the documents.

“Earp,” Dolls says, exasperated but without taking his eyes away from his work. “There are half a dozen flat surfaces in this office; please feel free to use any one of them to get your donut mess on. Better yet, there are plates in the kitchenette.” 

Wynonna catches Waverly’s gaze, raises both eyebrows and widens her eyes in her usual ‘look at this guy’ reaction. Waverly lets her own eyes flick to the ceiling for a second in solidarity with her sister, but she needs to be on Dolls’ good side today. “Hi Dolls,” Waverly chirps, and she stays well away from his work to avoid any accusations of interfering with his setup. She’d twirl her hair if she thought it would work, like when she angles for tips down at Shorty’s, but Waverly can imagine the reaction. Hilarious, mind, but not today. “Any research you need today?”

Dolls glances at her, and he doesn’t smile but he also doesn’t _not_ smile, and that’s about as good as it gets. “Actually, yes. We’ve got reports of a new drug on the streets here in Purgatory, and we’re looking to get it shut down before it becomes a problem.” 

Waverly blinks. “I mean, not that I’m going to argue that keeping the streets clean isn’t important, but are we sure that’s Black Badge material?” Wynonna’s expression is closed off, serious even with the smear of icing at the corner of her mouth, and Dolls has that muscle jumping in the corner of his jaw. “This isn’t a normal happy-times kind of drug, is it.”

“No.” Dolls slides a piece of paper toward her. “On the surface it looks like it is, all the highs with none of the comedown, except for two things. One, it looks like if you take it, you end up dead — unless you already were. And two, from what we can tell it’s being manufactured right here in Purgatory.” 

Waverly thumbs through the list of reported incidents: the usual drunk and disorderly, but with the addition of rages, accompanied by super-strength and — some witnesses swear — glowing red eyes. “Lovely.” Waverly hands the file back. “So we have super-heroin for Revenants.”

“More like meth,” Dolls corrects her, in that offhand way he does without really paying attention. “Heroin addicts aren’t that much trouble unless they’re out of drugs and looking for more. Here we’ve got destruction of property, aggression, street fights, and here and there actual assault. No murder yet, but we’d rather stop it before it gets there.” 

“Right.” Waverly wipes her hands on her jeans. Suddenly the office feels chilly, and she would regret wearing a crop top except that she does this to herself on the regular. She crosses her arms over her stomach and tries not to glance at Wynonna. It’s been years since Wynonna was caught with drugs, and she’s been clean — hasn’t she? — for a while now, but still. “So what do you need me for?” 

“From what we can tell the drug is made for Revenants, though the dealers aren’t exactly picky about who buys it as long as they’re paying.” Dolls taps one finger on a thick manila folder. “We have reason to believe that Bobo or one of his men are behind this, but we really can’t just go charging into the trailer park without a warrant, and after last time nobody is falling over backwards to give me one. I need any kind of intel you’ve got on the Seventy-Seven, anyone who might have been a chemist or an apothecary or whatever back in the day. Any kind of freaky medicine science. Got anything come to mind?”

“Not offhand, but give me a few hours and I’m sure I’ll come up with something,” Waverly says. This is perfect, exactly the kind of research that will take most of the day and keep her occupied — let her forget about Bobo and his crew inside Shorty’s, touching everything and getting their stupid Revenant germs all over it. She doesn’t bother asking for any of Dolls’ case files; she’s got everything she needs for research, and Dolls guards his files like they’re his murder-filled babies. “What are you two going to do?”

Wynonna wipes her mouth with a napkin, crumples it and tosses it toward the trash can in a valiant but futile attempt to dunk. “We’re going to see if we can track down where it’s coming from, build up enough of a case to get a warrant.” Dolls shoots her a look, and Wynonna angles her head down, clasps both hands behind her back and stares up at him through her lashes in such a parody of innocence that Waverly has to turn a giggle into a cough. “I promise I’ll be good, I’ll wait for evidence and won’t shoot anyone or anything.” 

Dolls slits her a look but doesn’t comment, and Waverly clears her throat. “Call me if any new info comes up,” she says. “I’ll let you know as soon as you find anything.” 

Wynonna shoots her a salute that she turns into a two-fingered gun-to-temple gesture behind Dolls’ back, and Waverly grins.

On the way out she runs into Nicole, Stetson riding low on her forehead and her gun and walkie-talkie on her hip. “Looking good, officer,” Waverly says. “Very … official.” 

Nicole tips her hat. “Got a call about a disturbance down by the auto shop, probably one of the boys trying to gouge the wrong customer. Heading over to stop it before anyone does anything stupid.” Nedley’s in his office, the door open and desk visible from the hall, and so Nicole keeps her distance, but even so Waverly’s heartbeat skips. “Maybe I can meet you tonight after my shift, since you’re not working the graveyard at Shorty’s.” 

Waverly swallows. “Maybe,” she says, keeping it light. Casual. This is how friends and colleagues talk to each other, right? Nothing suspicious here. “You’ve got my number.”

She flees before she can do something entirely stupid like stand on tiptoes and kiss Nicole in front of everyone, and the warmth of her girlfriend’s dimpled grin keeps the chill away all the way back to the homestead.

Even though Waverly steps in that stupid puddle again on the way back.

* * *

Waverly works through the rest of the morning, combing through piles of newspapers with the microfiche machine she snagged when the library made the switch over to digital. She clears off a space on her bedroom wall for a mess of index cards, clippings and photos, since being able to see everything laid out in front of her helps no matter what Wynonna might say about scrapbooking and walls of crazy. 

She takes a break to make herself a sandwich and pour herself a glass of wine since the water still isn’t working, then sits back and munches while staring at the piles of biographies and pages of scrawled notes. This isn’t a serial killer with a centuries-old MO, is the problem; anyone creating a new breed of street drugs might have medical experience back in Wyatt’s day, but they’ll have had to pick up most of it in the last few generations. It’s not like Waverly can check the records for an 1800s meth lab. 

Waverly pulls herself out of it again around dusk, when the last of the red glow from the sunset leaves a bloody splash across the blue-grey snow. Waverly pushes the pages away with an irritated gust of breath and stands up, stretching her hands over her head and twisting back and forth as the joints in her spine let out a series of alarming pops. A whole day of research and she’s no closer to finding the Revenant than she was this morning, but at least it kept her occupied.

A quick glance at the clock tells her that Nicole’s shift ended a few minutes ago, and Waverly smiles at the empty room. A good meal with her pretty girlfriend — _girlfriend_! — is a perfect way to end off a day full of petty frustrations and lack of progress. It’s amazing, really, how much Nicole’s smile and the brush of her fingers against Waverly’s cheek can turn the most rotten mood around.

Waverly laughs out loud, presses the backs of her hands to her face to feel the hot flush. Realistically this phase will fade, routine will replace dizzying rush of feelings and each kiss will stop feeling like a crazy impulse, but not yet. Right now the pattern of freckles at the nape of Nicole’s neck when Waverly sweeps her hair out of the way still makes her stomach flip.

It would be a lot more romantic if Waverly could shower before dinner, but she forgot to call the plumber in the depths of her research fugue and now it’s too late to get anyone in tonight — assuming she could convince anyone to come out to the homestead at all. Tomorrow she’ll ask around, but for now Waverly braids her hair around the crown of her head instead and hopes Nicole won’t judge her.

Nicole said she’d call — or, well, Waverly invited her to, that’s close enough right — but the sun sets and the phone still doesn’t ring. Waverly plops down on the couch with an album of articles and photographs in her lap to give herself something to do while she waits. The clock on the wall ticks, each click seeming louder and louder in the silent homestead until Waverly swears the actual walls are resonating with it. 

Still no Nicole. It’s not like that’s strange, she’s a cop and cops work late, Waverly knows that. Nicole even told her that’s the reason why she didn’t bother dating much through her early twenties, that most people couldn’t deal with the long hours and the cancelled plans last minute. Still, usually she calls if she’s not going to make a meeting on time.

“I could go down to the station and see what’s up, you know, casual,” Waverly says to herself, and to the sparrow on the windowsill outside that’s giving her an unnecessarily judgemental eyeball. “Nothing wrong with that. Maybe I’ll pick up some takeout and we can eat it at the desk, if she’s stuck doing paperwork.” Maybe offering Nedley some of the leftovers will even butter him up enough to let Nicole off for the rest of the night.

Waverly is leafing through the pile of takeout menus by the fridge when the front door bangs open and Wynonna bursts in, knocking the fresh snow from her boots. Waverly leaps to her feet, and she almost reaches for the gun over the door because that’s Wynonna’s shit-has-gone-south face.

“What happened?” Waverly bursts out.

“I don’t suppose you’ve found our guy yet?” Wynonna asks, voice tight. Waverly shakes her head, eyes wide, and Wynonna waves a hand. “No, it’s all right, I’m not — we wouldn’t have gotten there in time anyway. There was another attack, M.E. says probably this morning, a few hours before anybody called it in. Clawed up a few people down at the auto shop, including the cop who went to investigate the — what?”

Wynonna stops as Waverly stumbles back a step. “Hey, baby girl, what’s wrong?” Wynonna asks. “I’m sorry, should I not talk about the actual gory parts, I’m never sure —”

“I killed a stripper with a pair of scissors, remember?” Waverly says, waving off the concern. The split second of indignation gives her a moment’s respite before the terror comes crashing back. “Who was attacked? The police officer, who was it?” 

“Oh.” Wynonna blinks. Waverly didn’t quite shout it, but it was a near thing. Even now she must look half-Revenant herself, eyes blazing and posture tense. “It was Officer Haught, I guess she went to investigate the first disturbance and —” 

“Is she dead?” Waverly prides herself for being able to get the words out, panic clenching her throat so tight she can barely breathe, let alone speak. “Wynonna! Is she dead!”

Wynonna’s giving Waverly a full on alarmed face now, looking at her sidelong as she angles her body away. “No, she’s in critical care, but one of the guys from the auto shop didn’t make it. Wave —”

“Excuse me.” Waverly brushes past, knocking her shoulder against Wynonna’s arm in her hurry, and grabs her coat from the rack by the door, shoves her feet into her boots so fast she nearly topples. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wave —” Wynonna calls after her, voice full of confusion, but the door slams shut behind Waverly and cuts off the rest.

It’s a long run to the hospital, and most of it blurs in Waverly’s mind. It’s darkness and cars honking and the blinding lights of the lobby, the nurse’s stare when Waverly practically jumps over the counter to get at the records herself.

“I’m sorry, but we only allow family to see patients in critical care,” the nurse says, with the tone of someone who is not making this speech for the first time.

Waverly grits her teeth. “She’s new in town, she has no family in Purgatory!” she spits out. “Please, I need to see her, even for a few minutes — _please_!”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse says again, firmly. “You can wait in the lounge over there and I will have someone come get you when she’s allowed visitors, but if you can’t calm down I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

For a wild second Waverly almost tries playing the girlfriend card, but sanity holds her back. That’s not likely to get her any favours here in Purgatory, and for all she knows it wouldn’t actually help legally unless they were actually married or something. Instead she zombie-walks to lounge and drops down into one of the uncomfortable beige chairs and pulls her knees up to her chest.

Waverly’s mind drifts as she waits, playing a sickening reel of imagined disaster footage of the incident — the Revenant, foaming and furious; Nicole, cool and professional, trying to talk him down before reaching for her gun; the attack, nails raking her face and teeth at her throat, blood spurting from the wounds and pooling on the floor when she collapses — interspersed with memories of Nicole’s smile, her laugh, the press of her fingers to Waverly’s hips. Waverly digs her forehead into the heels of her hands, rocking back and forth and whispering words that are somewhere between plea, prayer and complete nonsense.

“Hey.” Wynonna sits down on the chair next to her, her arm settling across Waverly’s shoulders. “Hey, baby girl, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were that close or I would’ve called you sooner —” 

“It’s fine.” Waverly could explain, now would be the perfect time, but she can’t dredge up the energy for a confession. The blind panic has spent itself and now there’s nothing but worry, cold and wide and forever like the expanse of the salt flats out at the edge of the Triangle. “I just, she’ll be okay, right?” 

Wynonna pauses. “Yeah,” she says finally, and Waverly laughs, harsh and ragged, because her sister, for all her reputation, has always been a terrible liar. “Yeah, Waves, I’m sure she’ll be fine.” 

Waverly lets Wynonna pull her in against her side, tuck her head under her chin, and she squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on the slow beat of Wynonna’s heart.

* * *

An explosion wakes her. Waverly flings herself to her feet, or tries, but Wynonna’s arms are tight around her and she can’t — no, that’s not Wynonna at all, it’s a blanket. Her blanket, the pink quilt she keeps on her bed, and that’s the homestead’s wooden floors beneath her bare feet, not the white and grey hospital linoleum.

She’s not at the hospital at all. She’s home.

No hospital. No Nicole, pale and unconscious in a hospital bed, stuck full of tubes and who knows what while the doctors operate on her. A dream, just a dream. Waverly drops her face into her hands and almost bursts into tears right there in the middle of her bedroom, the relief slamming into her so hard it hurts.

“ _Shit_!” Wynonna shouts from the kitchen. “Shit, Wave, no, it’s fine, I just — eggs, microwave — apparently they explode, who knew?”

“Everyone?” Waverly calls back without thinking, but then she stops dead. The shiver of _deja vu_ walks a finger down her spine, and she wraps the quilt around her shoulders. “Wynonna, did you say you just exploded eggs?”

She runs into the kitchen, where Wynonna stands in front of the microwave holding a bowl and staring at it mournfully. “We have a perfectly good frying pan,” Waverly points out. The words echo oddly in her head, and she shakes it to try to clear her mind. 

“Look, fire and me, we don’t get along so well — or maybe too well.” Wynonna shrugs, one shouldered. The strange feeling at the back of Waverly’s mind intensifies. “Plus, microwaves are quick, I thought the whole point is you’re supposed to be able to cook anything in them nowadays. I swear I read about poached eggs made without a stove.” 

Wynonna stops, gives Waverly a long look. “Hey, you look spooked, you okay?”

“No, I —” Waverly gropes for a chair at the kitchen table, pulls it out and drops into it, still wrapped in her quilt. “I just had a really weird dream, that’s all.” 

“Well, nothing cures a bad dream like breakfast,” Wynonna says, gesturing with the empty bowl and a wry expression. “Look, I’m sorry the eggs exploded, I was trying to make you something. I know how much losing Shorty’s got to you, and while I’m not going to cry about you finally tossing Champ the Chump onto the curb, breakups still suck, so.”

“It’s okay,” Waverly says. A phrase niggles at her, and she decides to chase the feeling and go with it. “I’ll let you cheer me up with your superb culinary skills.” 

Wynonna straightens, face somewhere between startled and pleased. “That’s exactly what I was going to say,” she says. “But maybe let’s try cereal. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” Waverly lets out a long breath. The dream is already fading into confusion, drifting and loosening in the morning sun the way clouds that look like rabbits never keep their shape as they move across the sky. “Yeah, I’m fine. Cereal sounds great.”


	2. Wynonna

It’s been a long time since Wynonna woke up on the rock-hard bench in a cell at the station, but apparently there are some habits a girl just can’t kick. The light glares down at her, even more harsh and glaring since Nedley apparently had the old-fashioned bulbs replaced with halogens a few years ago, and Wynonna claps a hand over her eyes and groans. Stupid Nedley. Stupid halogens. Stupid whoever invented lights, why couldn’t they all just lie around in nice, safe darkness forever with no loud noises? 

Slowly, slowly, Wynonna slides her legs over the side of the bench and sits up, pushing herself up with one elbow and then her hand, all the while keeping her eyes shaded. Her memories from last night are about as clear and present as Champ Hardy’s dignity, and as much as Wynonna digs around in there she’s got nothing. A few hazy images — chasing a Revenant, Peacemaker heavy in her hand, Waverly shouting — but after that, nothing. 

Well, Wynonna’s here in lockup with a splitting headache, which means they got the bad guy and went out for drinks and she got a little carried away — except no, that’s not right, is it. Wynonna frowns, closing her eyes against the warning bell in the back of her mind, but then she remembers: Bobo bought Shorty’s, which means all Wynonna’s drinking since had been at home with bottles of whatever terrible moonshine she could get her hands on, no Waverly to cut her off, and no last call.

Right. That explains it, then. Although, if she started out at home and ended up in lockup it must have been one hell of a self party. “Please tell me I’m wearing all my clothes,” Wynonna mutters out loud, before performing a check. “Shirt, check. Pants, check. Boots, no joy. Stupid stickler Nedley.” A quick flick of her fingers beneath her shirt collar and the waistband of her jeans shows her bra and underwear safely in place, and Wynonna lets out a breath of relief. “Carousing, maybe, but not naked, so that’s something,” she says to herself.

Her bladder gives an insistent tickle, but Wynonna crosses her legs and curls her toes. “I don’t think so,” she warns the traitorous organ. “My days of using lockup toilets are over, thank you very much.” 

After a few minutes she’s feeling a little better, less like a group of tiny Revenants decided to take up residence in her skull and try to drill their way out, and Wynonna manages to stand up. A little wobble but nothing serious, and she leans against the bars, letting her arms dangle through to the other side, and calls Nedley’s name.

The sheriff wanders over, thumbs stuck in his pockets. “Sleeping Beauty’s awake, is she?” he says in that dry, disapproving drawl that has always set Wyonna’s teeth on edge. Nedley isn’t her _dad_ , she doesn’t need his approval, so he really should quit acting like it’s a big deal she doesn’t have it. “You wanna talk about why you’re here, darlin’?”

Wynonna tilts her head and bats her eyes, giving Nedley her most exaggerated innocent face. It never works, but it does tend to weird people out, and that’s good enough. “Come on, Nedley, you know me. Just can’t say no to a party.” 

“I’m not sure I do,” Nedley says.

“Ouch.” Wynonna raises her eyebrows, even as inwardly she sighs. Every day in Purgatory adds a name to the list of people who will never forgive her for any one of a litany of supposed sins. “I thought we had a bond. Don’t all those times you locked me up instead of sending me off to juvie count for something?”

This time Nedley frowns. “I’m not sure you got me right, miss. I’ve got me a stranger with no ID who turned up one night passed out on the sidewalk. If you want to pretend you know me, you’ll have to give me a name.” 

“What?” Wynonna bursts out. “Look, okay, I got drunk last night and you brought me here to sleep it off, why do you have to be such a hard-ass?”

“Name,” Nedley says, folding his arms.

“Ugh.” Wynonna pushes herself back from the bars and crosses hers right back at him. Her jacket better be in a closet somewhere; without her leather and fringe she’s only half-dressed, like sending a knight to fight a dragon without his armour. Already she misses the weight of Peacemaker at her hip, so here’s hoping Nedley won’t make her pay a fine to get it back. “Wynonna Earp, are you happy?” 

Nedley’s expression hardens even further, which is impressive given how stony it was already. “This isn’t a game, miss.” 

There’s enough residual alcohol in Wynonna’s system that she almost slams her hand into the bars, but not so much that she actually does it. Breaking her hand at fourteen from doing exactly that is the kind of thing that sticks with a girl. “I don’t know what else you want from me, Nedley. Rank and serial number?” 

Nedley sighs, a blustery sound that ruffles his moustache, and for the first time his glare shifts more to resigned exasperation. “Look, I know what you are. You’re one of those — what are they called? Live-action role players, or whatever. You think it’s cute to come here, pretend to be Wyatt Earp’s long-lost heir, I get it. But I’ve got a job to do and I’m real tired of this shit already, so if you could just cooperate I’ll get you out of here and we can both go on with our days.” 

The faint warning in the back of Wynonna’s mind explodes into an explosion, but she keeps her face still. “Sorry, you got me,” Wynonna says, heart thumping in her chest even as she puts on her best dimpled grin. “I’m Courtney. Courtney, uh, Masters. And you’re right, I am a huge Wyatt Earp fan. I just wanted to see what it was like to live in the real Purgatory.” She twirls a strand of hair around her fingers. “Guess I can’t handle the real Purgatory booze.” 

“Guess not.” Nedley’s look stays flat like he wants to roll his eyes but is being polite. “C’mon then, we’ll get you processed. You lay off the hard stuff and stick to your mojitos, you hear?” 

“Yes sir,” Wynonna says, snapping off a sharp salute. 

After writing her a citation, Nedley hands Wynonna back her effects. She shoves her feet into her boots and shrugs on her jacket, slides her necklace over her head, then frowns. “Did I have a gun when I came in here?” Wynonna asks, putting the innocent voice back on.

Nedley raises his eyebrows. “Should you have?” 

“No, no,” Wynonna says quickly. Shit, this is weird, but the worst part of it all is how this is maybe only the fifth weirdest thing to happen to her this month. “I was just worried, that’s all. You know, get drunk, wake up and find myself married with a new gun or something.” 

“This ain’t Florida,” Nedley grunts. “You can stick around town if you take it easy, but you wind up back in here and I’m gonna have to put you on the next bus back to the city.” 

“Yes sir,” Wynonna says again, and heads out the door.

Immediately she ducks to the right and slips back in, taking the side hallway to Dolls’ office. She finds him in his usual macho pose, bent to examine a pile of papers on the table, arms spread and hands splayed flat to the tabletop. “Hey, Dolls,” Wynnona calls out. “You know any Revenants or weirdo stuff that can erase memories? Nedley doesn’t remember who I am.” 

Dolls stiffens like someone jammed a knife into his spine, and a second later he pushes his way past Wynonna and slams the door behind her. “What did you say?” He stares at Wynonna with fierce intensity, and oh no. Not him too. “Who are you? Who sent you?” 

Yep, Dolls too. Wynonna’s mind does a few cartwheels to catch up, then she pulls her out her trusty airhead smile again. “I’m Courtney. I’m from out of town, big Earp fan, live action role-playing, all that. One of the men at the bar said they’d buy me a drink if I asked you that question.” She frowns, making sure to put on an extra pout. Sure enough, Dolls’ expression shifts from attention to annoyance. “I’m guessing it was a practical joke. I’m not even sure I got the words right.”

“Yeah, guess so.” Dolls steps back and folds his arms, making his muscles stand out against the thin material of his sweater. Someone really ought to take him shopping and let him know how clothes are supposed to fit, it’s seriously annoying. “Look, I’m busy and this is out of bounds to the public. Just tell me which buddy of mine told you to talk to me, I’ll go let him know he owes you a drink.” 

“Tall guy, beardy, teeth not so great,” Wynonna improvises, which helpfully describes pretty much every Revenant out there. “Thanks, I’ll be heading out now.” 

Dolls stays between Wynonna and his desk, and Wynonna closes the door behind her on her way out.

“Shit,” Wynonna mutters, “Shit, shit _shit_. Who else is there?”

She passes Officer Haught on the way, uniform crisp and hair perfect as always, carrying a cup of coffee. Wynonna wonders sometimes if Nicole ever gets tired of looking like a recruitment poster. “Hey, Officer,” Wynonna says, snagging her by the sleeve.

Nicole spins on her heel and clicks her boots against the floor on the way down. “Yeah?” She says, friendly enough, but it’s the polite-to-strangers kind, no recognition in her eyes.

Still, always poke the body before calling the morgue, right? “What would you say my name is?” Wynonna asks.

Nicole frowns. “‘Scuse me?” 

Well, that answers that. “I’m thinking of changing mine, that’s all,” Wynonna says. “If you had to give me a name, what would it be?”

Nicole opens her mouth, head tilted and one eye half-squinted in confusion. “I — maybe Meg?”

“Meg, huh,” Wynonna says, pretending to give it some thought. “Well, thanks for the input, Officer.” 

“No problem,” Nicole says, clearly bemused.

Wynonna manages to keep to a normal pace until she’s out of the station, then she breaks out into a run.

Ironically, what she could use right now more than anything is a drink (stupid Bobo) but it’s probably for the best right now. If Wynonna spent the night in jail and had to check herself out in the morning, that must mean Waverly was either too tired or too angry to come get her, and turning up already drunk the next morning is not the best way to make amends.

As long as Peacemaker is back at the homestead, Wynonna can figure everything out. If she lost it — well, she’ll deal with that when she gets to it, but Wynonna picks up the pace anyway.

* * *

She’s breathing hard by the time she reaches the homestead, and Wynonna presses one hand to her ribs and tries to smooth away the stitch. “It’s almost like never exercising and drinking a lot of alcohol don’t give a person a stunning physique,” Wynonna says to herself, then glares at a crow that’s sitting on the fence post and giving her the eye. “Don’t judge me, you stupid bird, it’s not like you do pilates.” 

Once her breath returns, Wynonna heads up the front walk and pushes open the door — or, tries to. Instead the handle sticks in her hand, and the door rattles in the frame but doesn’t open. “Wave, did you seriously lock me out?” Wynonna pinches her nose, then knocks on the door with the side of her fist. “C’mon, Wave, let me in, I’m tired and I’m sorry I drank too much but I’ll make it up to you, pretty pretty please?” 

The door opens, but it’s not Waverly. “Daddy?” Wynonna says in a small voice, as the blood rushes in her ears and her head fills with the sound of quiet roaring. 

Ward Earp frowns down at Wynonna, and he doesn’t stand back from the door to let her in. “Who the hell are you?” He demands, and he still doesn’t open the door any wider but he does move so Wynonna can see the steely flash of Peacemaker resting in his holster.

“Holy shit,” Wynonna says. She staggers back a step, presses a hand to her breastbone and forces herself to take a deep breath. “It’s not everyone else, it’s me. I’ve gone crazy.”

Ward chews on his lower lip, eyes narrowed, and he’s grown a beard and has more grey hair curling around his temples than in Wynonna’s memories but that’s him all right, same faded jeans and flannel, and the ache in Wynonna’s chest sharpens. “Say what now?” 

Wynonna turns to go, then stops herself and spins back around. “I can’t — I don’t know what —” She looks up at him, eyes wide, and Wynonna can’t help wondering if she looks as young as she feels. If he looks at her and sees the ten-year-old girl who shot him in the back — or, apparently, didn’t. And if Ward Earp is still alive, then maybe — “I’m sorry, can I just come in?” Wynonna blurts out. “Look, I’m on the Earp land, which means I’m not a Revenant, right? I just want — I _need_ — to talk.” 

Her father stares at her, shocked eyebrows quickly furrowing into a frown, but then he nods. “Well you got one thing right anyway, if you know about Revenants then we do need to talk.”

He ushers her inside, and Wynonna gulps in air and blinks to clear the stinging in her eyes and tries to look like a normal person making a social call and not someone on the verge of a breakdown. “You go on inside, have a seat,” Daddy says. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee, you look like you need it.” 

“Daddy?” calls a voice from upstairs — Wynonna covers her mouth because please, _please —_ and then a woman a little older than Wynonna jogs down the steps. She’s the same height as Wynonna, with long, straight brown hair and full lips set in a downward tilt, and she doesn’t match Wynonna’s memories but those memories are seventeen years behind her and people change, people grow, and what if — “Daddy, who’s this?”

“That’s what I want you to find out,” Daddy says. “Show her the living room and I’ll be there in a second, Willa.” 

Willa turns to Wynonna with a sharp, assessing look, but then she smiles. “Sure thing. Come on in, let’s see what’s going on.” 

Wynonna nods, swipes at her eyes when Willa turns her back to lead Wynonna into the main sitting room, and swallows a burst of hysterical laughter. As she walks, Wynonna glances at the pictures hanging on the wall and finds one of Waverly, gap-toothed and grinning as she stands beside a large handmade poster detailing the Wyatt Earp legend. There’s pictures of her and Willa both, learning to shoot or wearing matching dresses in front of a Christmas tree. Wynonna swallows even as her throat goes dry.

Daddy, Willa, Waverly, all three of them are there — and Gus and Uncle Curtis, even, in one posed photo in front of the homestead in spring. Mom’s not in any of the photos except for a few of her feet and hands with little Waverly, just like Wynonna remembers. Wynonna scours the photos as she passes, even slows down her walk as much as she can without looking too suspicious, but no matter how hard she looks, every photo tells the same story.

Daddy. Willa. Waverly. Mom. 

No Wynonna.

“So,” Willa says, sitting own on the couch, and she waves a hand for Wynonna to take a seat. “What’s your name?” 

“Wynonna,” Wynonna says, her voice little above a whisper.

“Wynonna?” Willa cocks her head to the side, then smiles again. “That’s nice, I like that. What can we do for you?”

“I need to throw up,” Wynonna says, and darts for the bathroom.

She’s already bent over the toilet, heaving up the contents of her stomach, when she remembers she forgot to ask Willa where the bathroom is. 

Wynonna splashes cold water on her face, then grips the sink and stares at her red-eyed reflection in the mirror. “You look like shit,” she tells herself, but it’s not as though staying here is going to fix it. Wynonna pulls her jacket tighter around herself, then pushes open the door and heads back into the living room.

Daddy has joined Willa on the couch, and they sit together in mirrored posture, legs crossed and backs straight. Daddy hands Wynonna a steaming mug when she sits down, and she lifts it to inhale the sweet scent of coffee only to get a nose full of grass. 

Daddy laughs at the look on her face. “I know, but after what just happened I thought maybe coffee was a bad idea,” he says. “We had some fancy-ass Japanese tea in the cupboard, not sure where it came from but I figured it would do.” 

“Waverly bought the tea,” Willa says. “Remember? She got it online because she read it’s supposed to help concentration.”

Hearing Willa say Waverly’s name brings a burst of recognition, and Wynonna takes a too-large mouthful of tea and burns her tongue just so she won’t say something stupid again. “Hey, look,” she says. “I’ll explain in a second, but I just have to ask. What happened on September 7, 2000?”

Daddy and Willa glance at each other, frowning. Willa lifts one shoulder, then Daddy turns back to Wynonna. “Couldn’t say that means anything to me. Should it?”

“Holy shit,” Wynonna says again, faintly. “No, I guess not.” 

“All right, then.” Daddy raises his eyebrows. “Let’s start from the beginning, then. You know who we are. You know about the Revenants. You know about the protection on the Earp homestead. That’s a lot you know about us, miss, and nothing we know about you.” 

Wynonna swallows. The words are casual, but she remembers that posture, watchful and wary — hell, she inherited it — and he might not have his hand on Peacemaker but he may as well have cocked it in her face. And while Wynonna has a lifetime of thinking on her feet and spitting bullshit with a second’s notice, when she tries to find some plausible story here she comes up dry.

“My name is Wynonna Earp,” she says, and holds the mug close to her chest. “I’m your daughter. On September 7, 2000, I shot you in the back with Peacemaker while trying to kill the Revenants who attacked our homestead. You died and I watched seven Revenants drag Willa away and I never saw her again.” 

Daddy jerks back, and Willa’s posture turns even sharper, eyes narrowing and head tilting to the side until she resembles a falcon eyeing prey. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Let’s try even more beginning than that.” 

“Wait,” Willa says. “We need our nerd. Waverly!” she hollers, tilting her head back. “We have a puzzle for you!” 

 Wynonna finishes the rest of the tea, gagging a bit on the bitter residue at the bottom, then reaches over and sets the mug on the side table. Daddy follows the motion with his gaze, and Wynonna realizes she did it without looking, and that he noticed. A quick tread on the stairs cuts off any questions, and a moment later Waverly turns the corner.

“Hey,” Waverly says, eyes flicking over Wynonna with wariness and without even a flicker of a smile, and it’s stupid that that’s what almost pushes Wynonna over the edge after everything else, but she has to suck in a breath to avoid crying for real. “What’s up?” 

“Hey Waves,” Wynonna says, and Waverly starts. “What do you know about alternate dimensions?” 

* * *

“See, it wouldn’t be a _dimension_ so much as an alternate _reality_ ,” Waverly says, gesturing to the scrawls all over the whiteboard she lugged down from her room and propped against the fireplace. “A dimension is anything that contains matter, space and time, and there might be multiple dimensions inside one reality, you know, like how there are different rooms in a house. An alternate _reality_ , on the other hand —”

“Oh my God, Wave,” Wynonna grounds without thinking, leaning back against the couch and sliding down in a way that Dolls likes to call unnecessarily dramatic. “Give me the kindergarten version, _please_.” 

Silence, the kind that’s thick and as telling as an actual conversation, and Wynonna swears under her breath. Then Waverly says, “Sorry, I just, it’s exciting, you know, quantum mechanics aren’t something I usually get to talk about —”

“Waverly.” Willa this time, and the tone is affectionate but with an edging of steel that cuts off any protest Waverly might have made. Wynonna frowns and sits up, sees Waverly staring at Willa with her cheeks splotched pink and Willa giving her an unreadable blank look. “Stay relevant.” 

“There are scientists who theorize that there could be infinite parallel universes,” Waverly says. She folds her arms over her chest, tucking herself in small as she turns away from Willa toward Wynonna. “No one can agree on how they form or what causes them or even what the divergence points are — whether they’re conscious decisions or environmental factors or random chance —”

Willa says nothing, only exhales slowly through her nose, and Waverly stops. “In this universe, there are two Earp daughters, me and Willa. It’s possible that Wynonna is from a parallel universe where everything is the same except that there are three.” 

“But it’s not exactly the same,” Willa interjects. “She says Revenants attacked the homestead, that she killed Daddy trying to stop them from killing me. That sounds like a pretty big difference to me.” 

Waverly opens her mouth, then shuts it, then looks at Wynonna, mouth pinched and eyes tight at the corners in what Wynonna has come to recognize as her sympathy face. The reason why hits Wynonna a second later.

“No, it is,” Wynonna says. “I killed Daddy. I failed to save Willa. Without me, you’re both still alive. The reason you both died is because of me. If I’m never born, then everything is fine.” 

Waverly reaches up and twists the end of her braid around her fingers. “I’m sure that’s not it,” she says quickly.

“No, no, it definitely is.” Wynonna stands up so fast the blood rushes from her head, and she staggers once before catching herself. “I ruin everything. That’s what I do.”

She leaves before anyone can stop her, runs up the stairs to her room and slams the door shut behind her. It’s not until she flings herself onto a bed with a soft blue and pink comforter — a room with pretty, feminine furnishings and piles of books on all the shelves — that Wynonna catches exactly what a dumb mistake she’d just made.

Again.

“ _Shit_!” Wynonna says for the millionth time, and rolls onto her back to press her hands to her eyes.

The door opens slowly, and footsteps creak across the floor. The mattress sinks, and a hand rests on her shoulder. “This is your room, huh,” says Willa, thoughtfully. “I’m sorry, this must be hard for you.” 

“You have no idea,” Wynonna rasps. “Wait, no, I can sum it up for you in three words: it fucking _sucks_.”

“I can’t believe I have another sister,” Willa says. 

Wynonna peels one hand off her face and gives Willa an incredulous look. “That’s the part that surprises you? Not the part where you’re dead?”

Willa smiles, but it’s sharp like broken glass and carries very little humour in it. “Oh no, you’re wrong, Wynonna,” she says. “That doesn’t surprise me at all.” 

Wynonna thinks about Peacemaker glowing red in her hand, about the ground opening up and the Revenants screaming as they fall. She thinks of straps on her wrists and the glint of a scalpel in the bright hospital lighting and Bethany’s guts, red and wet, spilling over onto the bed sheets.

“Yeah,” Wynonna says. “I guess not.” There’s not much point to continuing the conversation after that, and so Wynonna sits up, wipes her face, and follows Willa back into the living room. “So,” she says. “What else have I missed?”

The one upside to the whole mess so far is that apparently Bobo never bought Shorty’s in this universe, and for the best reason. Apparently, when Willa turned 27 he tried to come to the Earp homestead, said something about collecting his part of an agreement, only for Willa to pick up Peacemaker for the first time since harnessing the Heir’s power, point it between his eyes, and blow the trigger. First day on the job and she’d already killed the meanest, slimiest, most impossible to kill demon who’d made the last few months of Wynonna’s life really, really annoying.

Whatever deal Bobo might have struck that made him think he had easy access to Willa, he apparently hadn’t counted on what it meant to face down Willa herself. When Ward tells the story, tugging Willa in for a one-armed hug and kissing her on the temple, he laughs and says he’s never been more proud.

Willa, for her part, holds herself ramrod stiff the entire time until Ward — Wynonna can’t think of him as Daddy, he’s not hers and the sooner she gets over that the better — lets go, and she suffers the kiss with a brittle, strained-indulgence kind of smile. Wynonna tries to imagine what that must be like, to be twenty-nine and too old for open affection from her father, but that’s the kind of thought that’s better with whiskey and even better not thought at all, and so she laughs and tips her mug of terrible grassy tea.

“We’ll figure out a way to get you — back there,” Waverly says, when the conversation fades. She’s pulled the sleeve of her sweater down past her hand, toying with the hem between thumb and forefingers. The edges have frayed near her thumb, loose bits of thread poking out as she worries the fabric. Wynonna finds herself stuck watching Waverly’s fingers twist and curl, trying to remember if her Waverly has a nervous habit like that and what it means for this one. “It wouldn’t make sense if whatever got you here only works one way.”

“So I need to find me a Delorean and a bunch of plutonium and you’ll get me sorted,” Wynonna says, trying for humour. The best part is that Waverly’s face scrunches around the nose and mouth, and Wynonna pretends she has no idea what that’s about for a good five seconds before saying, “Okay, okay, tell me where I’m wrong.” 

Waverly looks shifty for a second before bursting out, “I mean you’re not _wrong_ , the Delorean is fictional and getting pedantic about fictional things is crazy —“ _Sure Waves_ , Wynonna thinks, though she doesn’t say anything, “but the Delorean is a time machine and we’re dealing with alternate realities, not time — oh.” Her expression clears, and she looks at Wynonna with new understanding and puffs out her cheeks a little. “You’re making fun of me!”

“Only because I love you,” Wynonna says, then snaps her mouth shut as Waverly draws in a sharp breath. “I mean — my Waverly, though I’m sure you’re great too. Wow, this is hard.” She stands up, turning quickly to avoid a trio of expressions she’s really not ready to see right now. “You know what, I’m going to go to Shorty’s for a bit, it’s been a bit of a long day and I’m sure you all have plenty to talk about. I’ll be at the bar if anyone comes up with something.” 

She doesn’t wait for them to try to stop her, half because the last thing she wants is to argue with strange versions of her family about her alcohol consumption, but also because if she waits and they don’t stop her that will just be awkward and awful and no thank you. Wynonna tugs on her coat as she pulls open the door and clomps down the familiar-unfamiliar front steps, trudging away across the homestead. 

She doesn’t wait to see if anyone follows her. That would be needy, and Wynonna has learned to know better than that.


	3. Waverly

“Okay hang on,” Waverly blurts out, interrupting Dolls in the middle of his briefing. He turns to give her a long, slow look, his mouth flattened out in that stiff smile that actually means ‘I hate you’, but Waverly ignores the warning. Wynonna looks up from the donut box, eyes flicking back and forth between them, and Waverly ignores her too. “We did this already. Didn’t we? Revenant street drug, kills humans, you want me to look up anyone from the Seventy-Seven who might have been involved in apothecary work back in the day.” 

Dolls frowns. “You’re right,” he says. “That is what I was going to say. Wynonna, did you have something to do with this?”

Wynonna pauses in the middle of brushing donut powder from the front of her shirt. “Seriously? You think I stole your case files and gave them to Waverly just so she could show you up at your briefing? I have way better things to do with my time.” 

“Wynonna didn’t tell me anything!” Waverly crosses her arms over her chest. “I swear we had this conversation yesterday, or — something, I keep remembering things. Like Wynonna exploding eggs in the microwave —“

“You cooked eggs in the microwave?” Dolls interjects.

“Oh like you’ve never done it,” Wynonna shoots back. “You barely eat when you’re at work, you want me to believe you wake up and make yourself a full balanced breakfast every morning?”

“Guys!” Waverly snaps. They both turn to stare at her, and Waverly feels the heat in her cheeks. “Look, I’m sorry, but there’s no water at the homestead and I stepped in a puddle and I’m remembering things that happened that no one else does, can we focus please? I’m starting to get scared.” 

Wynonna crosses over and slides an arm around Waverly’s shoulder, resting her cheek on the top of Waverly’s head. “I’m sorry Wave, that is mega weird, no wonder you’re freaking out. Dolls, we can figure this out too, right? I mean I know, scary drugs and everything, but we’re Black Badge, surely we can take on more than one case at a time.” 

Dolls frowns in thought. “Logically, it makes no sense for Waverly to be remembering events that already occurred. The kind of manipulation of space-time required would be unheard of outside of theoretical physics, let alone the causality involved.”

“Closet nerd,” Wynonna whispers in Waverly’s ear, and Waverly grins a little in spite of herself.

“What’s more likely,” Dolls says with exaggerated force, “is that somehow Waverly has been affected by magic that’s given her some sort of low-key prophetic ability. It’s not unheard of, people like the Stone Witch have cursed individuals with temporary foresight as a way to punish them.” 

“What do you mean, punish them?” Wynonna’s arm tightens. “Why would letting someone see the future be a punishment?”

“Cassandra,” Waverly says immediately. Her heart flutters in her chest, and she fights back the wave of fear. “You know, from Greek mythology? Apollo gave her the gift of prophesy but cursed her so that no one would ever believe her. Everyone thought she was crazy, and in most versions she really did go mad.” 

Wynonna scowls. “Well, I believe you, so that one’s already out,” she says, poking Waverly in the side.

“The other idea is that just because you see something coming doesn’t mean you can stop it,” Dolls says. “The lore is full of individuals who foresaw some terrible calamity but weren’t able to prevent it from occurring. They either died or went mad.” 

“Hey!” Wynonna says sharply. “Maybe knock it off with the doom and gloom, will you? This is my sister we’re talking about, not some urban legend.”

“And this might just be a coincidence,” Dolls adds. “We don’t know. All I’m saying is we need to keep all options open when we’re investigating. If there’s anything else you ‘remember’ happening, Waverly, it’s important that you let us know.” 

Waverly nods, but there’s uncertainty washing over her and she turns a little more into Wynonna’s shoulder for strength. “It’s not exactly like that,” she says. “I don’t see things before they happen, it’s more like, once they do happen I remember. Which, I have to admit, does sound more like a curse than a blessing, since I don’t see how that’s going to help me at all.”

“Donut?” Wynonna nudges Waverly toward the open box. “Get yourself some sugar while we figure out who did this and waste them back to hell.” 

“Do any donuts have alcohol in them?” Waverly counters, reaching for a honey glazed. There’s a niggling in the back of her mind, something important that she’s missing, and Waverly tries not to think about it. The best way to remember something forgotten is to focus on something else, and so she thinks back to a poem her second-grade teacher made them memorize to see if she can still recall it.

Dolls breaks into her thoughts partway through the verse about the rabbit making friends with the baby chick. “Waverly, this is important,” he says. “Can you think of anything else you remember happening?” 

Blowing out an exasperated breath, Waverly manages not to snap at Dolls as the flicker of memory slips away again. “Yes, I’m working on it,” she says instead. “Generally, though, putting me on the spot is not the best way to —“ Waverly stops, stares out through the narrow window at the main office beyond, including the empty front desk. “Wait, where’s Nicole?”

Dolls frowns again. “Who?” 

“Officer Haught,” Waverly corrects herself. “She’s usually — there’s something — oh _shit_!” She swipes her coat from the desk and shoves her arms into the holes, completely upside down the first time and only realizing when the hood smacks against the backs of her legs. She swears under her breath, rips off the parka and tries again. “Nicole, Officer Haught, she went to check out a disturbance somewhere in town and something bad happens, I don’t remember what, but we have to —“

Dolls puts out a hand to stop her. “Do you have any idea where she could be?” he asks. “You can’t just start running around town looking for her, not when there’s —“ 

“I don’t remember!” Waverly’s voice scales up as Wynonna shoots her a startled look, and she has to get herself under control, has to bring this all down a notch if she doesn’t want people questioning why she’s so upset over a deputy for no apparent reason. “Don’t ask me, ask Nedley, he’s the one who sent her out — wait.” 

The memory finally fades in strong enough to get a grasp on it — _Got a call down at the auto shop_ — and Waverly relays the information. Dolls refuses to let her go out to the auto shop herself, and Wynonna upsets the balance of the universe by agreeing with him, and so instead they talk to Nedley and have him put a call in to Nicole’s radio.

She doesn’t answer. Nedley sends another officer down to the auto shop to check while Waverly paces back and forth and peels off the edges of her fingernails until he gets a call back: there was a fight, and everyone involved took off, leaving Nicole unconscious on the ground.

From that point on Waverly’s memories spool out in horrifying double-time: rushing to the hospital, the nurse refusing to let anyone in except family, Dolls trying his ‘bullshit through the bullshit’ charm and failing, Nedley finally pulling rank and managing to get in to see her on the grounds that it’s an open investigation. Waverly drops back down onto the chair in the waiting room, head in her hands as Wynonna has a loud verbal altercation with the vending machine down the hall.

“I got you Cheetos,” Wynonna says finally, dropping down into the seat beside Waverly and dropping a small bag into her lap. “I tried for M&M’s but the stupid thing got stuck.” 

“Thanks.” Waverly doesn’t eat them, just holds the bag in her hands and presses her fingers against the air trapped inside. “This is my fault. I should have known this would happen. I _did_ know this would happen!”

“Hey, look, prophetic dreams or whatever, that’s some freaky stuff,” Wynonna says. “Plus it’s all in your head, it’s not like someone wrote it down for you nice and straightforward. Half the time I don’t remember what day it is.” 

“It’s my fault,” Waverly says again. She squeezes the Cheetos bag, feels the crunch of the chips at the bottom. “I should do better.  If someone did this to me there has to be a reason, I must be supposed to do something —“ 

Unless it’s exactly what Dolls said, and the point is for Waverly to suffer. Except that for someone to hurt Waverly through Nicole they would have to know about her and Nicole, and they haven’t told anyone — so who? And why? Why go to all this trouble when Revenants with no credit history or recent government ID can still get their hands on guns?

Wynonna rubs the back of Waverly’s neck as Waverly hunches over and lets out a frustrated groan. “Hey, why don’t you go lie down on a couch somewhere and take a nap? It’s not like sitting here worrying is going to get her better any faster. Me and Dolls will go back to trying to find whoever’s behind this whole drug thing.” 

“No.” Waverly sits up, clenches her jaw and glares down at the stupid sunglasses-wearing tiger on the bag in front of her. “You’re right, sitting here isn’t going to fix anything, and neither is taking a nap. I need to find out who’s done this.” 

Wynonna claps her on the shoulder. “That’s my girl,” she says. “We’ll pick up takeout on the way back to the station, I get the feeling it’s going to be a long night.” 

* * *

 

Later Waverly pushes away the pile of old newspapers, her mind swimming as deja vu mixes with whatever weird foresight thing is happening until she has no idea what she’s read or imagined anymore. Waverly rests her head on her hands and rubs her eyebrows, since apparently eyebrows have muscles and those muscles can tense and form tiny little knots that shift under her fingers and send points of pain stabbing through to her skull. “I can’t find anything,” she says aloud. 

The empty room is not sympathetic. Wynonna and Dolls have left to chase down a lead, Nicole hasn’t been released from the hospital, and Waverly just read ‘Wyatt Earp’ as ‘watermelon’ in the paper in front of her. Nedley promised to check in on his way home, now that happy hour at Shorty’s is a lot less pleasant, and the doctors said Nicole is in no danger and that’s that. 

If Waverly were in the hospital she would want everyone working to find out who’d done it and make sure it didn’t happen again, not sitting alone and worrying themselves to death, and so she’s trying. It’s just, with her eyes burning until they water and that kink in her spine like part of her body is trying for a record-breaking contortionist move without notifying the rest of her, this has been a really, really long day.

Waverly looks over at the coffee pot, runs through the entire process of struggling with the machine for twenty minutes just to get it to give her a mediocre cup of office swill, then shakes her head. “A nap is as good as a coffee,” she says, with extra firmness in the hopes she’ll actually convince herself. Still, if science wants to tell her that looking at kittens sparks productivity and napping is better than pushing through, who is she to argue?

Nobody would blame her for taking a quick snooze. Well, Dolls might, but he’s not here, and she’ll be awake before he gets back. Waverly pushes a few of the chairs into a line, balls up her jacket for a makeshift pillow, and stretches out for a quick siesta.

* * *

 

Waverly wakes up in her own bed, sunlight streaming through the blinds, to the sound of a small explosion rocking the kitchen. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says to the ceiling, as downstairs Wynonna bursts into a string of profanity. 

* * *

 

“Groundhog Day,” Waverly says to Wynonna as she strides into the kitchen, cutting off the apologies and flailing and the attempts at making Waverly feel better for losing Shorty’s. “I’m stuck in Groundhog Day. Every time I fall asleep, I wake up back here with you blowing up the eggs. I don’t know why, but I need to stop it.” 

Wynonna stares at her, holding the towel-wrapped bowl. “What? Wave, are you okay? Did you have a weird dream?”

“Yes! No, I don’t know, maybe, I haven’t figured out what it is.” Waverly paces the kitchen, gesticulating wildly and nearly smacking Wynonna in the face on the way past. “All I know is that I’m stuck living today, and as far as I know I’m the only one who remembers any of this happening but we don’t know why or how. There’s a new Revenant drug on the streets that’s killing normals who take it, and Dolls doesn’t like the way you eat powdered donuts, and Nicole —“

She stops dead, slamming her hip into the corner of the stove. Wynonna sets down the bowl. “What is it?” she asks, and Waverly could hug her. Probably she thinks Waverly has lost her mind but she’s not questioning, not telling her she’s imagining things or that she needs to take a nap or see a shrink or —

(Oh. Of course she isn’t. Wynonna had years of therapy and doctors and psychologists telling her she was crazy, that she’d imagined the horrors that had made up their bedtime stories since they were too young to understand and part of their reality from not long after. All that time Wynonna spent being poked and prodded and her sanity unravelled and she never once pointed to Waverly, never said _my baby sister saw them too_. Waverly has always loved Wynonna even in those long years when they never saw each other, but sometimes her love for her sister hits so hard it hurts.)

Waverly blinks back a wave of tears she doesn’t have the time to indulge in right now. “Nicole gets attacked,” she says. “Down at the auto shop. I couldn’t stop it the first time and the second time I forgot until it’s too late, but now I remember and I have to stop it.” 

“Okay.” Wynonna tosses the bowl and its ossified egg fragments into the sink, grabs her jacket from its spot by the door and throws it on. “You get dressed, I’ll call Dolls. We’ll beat this, okay?” Waverly nods, and Wynonna catches her by the arm. “Hey, I mean it. We’ll beat this, I promise.” 

Waverly nods, too many times in a row to be natural but she can’t help herself, and Wynonna smacks a kiss on her forehead before shoving her off. Waverly pulls on jeans and a sweater, nearly trips over herself trying to get her jeans pulled up over her hips while also running down the stairs, and nearly takes a nosedive at the bottom. Wynonna hands her a cup of coffee, forgotten from yesterday and reheated from the microwave, and it tastes like gym shoes made from rusty tin but none of that matters. Not if she can help Nicole.

“So you said this is your third time through?” Wynonna asks as they trudge across the long expanse of field on their way to town. “Does that mean you know what I’m going to say next?”

Waverly shakes her head, sticks her hands beneath her armpits against the chill. “No, every time I’ve done the morning differently. The first time you went to work without me, the second time I came with you but I thought I’d just been dreaming so we didn’t talk about this until we got to work. I don’t know what’s causing the loops or how to break them. For all I know as soon as I fall asleep again I’ll start right back over again.” 

Wynonna frowns. “That does not sound fun,” she says. “Okay, well, in Groundhog Day the guy had to become less of an ass for the loop to break, right, and that’s why it took so long, but you’re already pretty much perfect so it can’t be that.” 

Waverly’s mouth twists in a tiny smile in spite of herself. “You have to say that, you’re my sister.” 

“Uh, no, I don’t, you’re my sister and I don’t hear you calling me perfect,” Wynonna shoots back. Waverly has a split-second to feel guilty before Wynonna continues, “This is because you can make breakfast without setting the kitchen on fire, obviously, otherwise I know I’d be right up there. So assuming it’s not some freaky cosmic force that thinks you need a life lesson, what else could it be?” 

“Bored Revenant with a time machine?” Waverly quips, making Wynonna laugh, breath puffing in the air in front of her face. “I really don’t know, Wynonna, and that scares me. But if I can save Nicole this time then after that I can focus on the problem without worrying all the time.” 

They reach the edge of town, and Wynonna jogs ahead as they cross the street. “Waves, watch your step —“ Wynonna calls out, right before Waverly’s foot plunges right into the icy puddle. “Thought you would’ve seen that coming,” Wynonna says idly.

Waverly stares down at the line of moisture creeping up the hem of her jeans. “Yeah,” she says. “I really should have.”

* * *

 

Dolls reacts to Waverly’s information with far more skepticism than Wynonna, but Waverly expected that. “I can tell you everything that’s in that briefing folder,” Waverly says. “After this you can keep me here and I’ll explain whatever I need to, but right now I need you to talk to Nedley and stop him from sending Nicole out to the auto shop this morning. Okay? Say whatever you need to but don’t let her go, I can’t let her get hurt again.” 

“We can’t arrest people before something happens because you claim to have had some sort of premonition,” Dolls says, frowning, then turns to Wynonna with an exasperated pinched-mouth expression that Waverly remembers.

“Earp,” Waverly cuts in, glaring at Wynonna and putting on her best deep voice. “There are half a dozen flat surfaces in this office for you to put your donut mess on. Better yet, there are plates in the kitchenette.” Not a perfect recollection, but close enough, and Waverly turns back to Dolls, lifting her chin and eyebrows in challenge. “What? That’s what you were going to say. Now are you going to help me or do I have to go talk to Nedley myself?”

Dolls gives her a long, flat stare, then nods. “Fine. I’ll have Nedley keep Officer Haught off active duty for the next few hours while we figure out what’s going on. Right now I need to you to tell me anything you’ve learned that might be a lead.”

They’re well into the briefing — Wynonna very conspicuously eating her donuts over a paper plate nicked from the kitchen — when Nicole knocks on the door, her face resolved into stony lines. Dolls raises an eyebrow and gestures to Waverly, whose heart turns over in her chest as she drops her armful of papers. She slips through the door, shutting it behind her, and swallows the hard rush of relief at seeing Nicole here, safe and not bleeding all over the cold sidewalk or hidden away in the intensive ward at the hospital.

“Hey,” Waverly says, moving a little way down the hall. “I’m glad you’re okay —“

“What the hell, Waves?” Nicole bursts out, and it’s a toss-up whether her words or sheer surprise are what cuts Waverly off faster. Just last week Nicole’s idea of “being an asshole” was getting mildly snappish during a conversation where Waverly pretty much made no sense whatsoever. “You told Nedley to ground me? You wanna let me know what’s going on?” 

“No — I didn’t — I mean, technically Dolls —“ Waverly says, but Nicole only crosses her arms  and stares down from the full advantage of her greater height. She doesn’t step closer, makes no threatening moves, she doesn’t even flail and tantrum like Champ on one of his whiny days, but somehow that makes it even worse. 

A long-buried impulse to duck her head, pull her arms around herself and fold in small — gone since the days of Willa and Daddy — leaves Waverly briefly frozen before she catches herself and chooses to fiddle with the end of her braid herself. “There was trouble down at the auto shop,” Waverly says. 

“Yeah, I know, I was going to take care of it because that’s my job,” Nicole says, emphasizing the last three words. “Instead I’m here doing paperwork while Nedley sends one of the guys. So what gives?” 

Waverly’s heart beats a frantic staccato in her chest. “You were going to get hurt, and I couldn’t — I couldn’t let that happen. I won’t.” 

A long silence passes between them, filling up with all the words Waverly isn’t allowed to say and that wouldn’t help anyway, and finally Nicole nods: just once, short and final. “Okay,” she says. She takes one step back, lets out a breath, and the anger drains from her posture as her shoulders settle and her hands fall to her sides. “Listen, Waverly, I get it, you want to protect people you care about. That’s one of the things I like about you. But I’m a cop, it’s my job to protect people, and getting blindsided by some serial killer who was after Wynonna is not going to change that.” 

Oh no. Waverly’s eyes widen, and she reaches out to grab Nicole’s hand but Nicole keeps herself just out of reach. “No, it’s not like that, it’s not that I don’t have faith in you, it’s just —“

“Like I said, I get it.” Nicole smiles, bitter and sardonic. “You’re not the first non-cop I’ve dated, and this always happens. Sooner or later they start worrying about me getting hurt on the job, wanting me to take nothing but easy cases, freaking out when I’m home late or have to take a night call. I just figured you’d be different, since Wynonna —“ 

“It’s not like that,” Waverly says, fast. Too fast. Nobody ever believes anyone when they talk that fast, it sounds rehearsed, except it’s not fake it’s just she’s nervous, and when she’s nervous the words sort of tumble out over one another and she can’t stop it. “Wynonna is —“

The rest of that sentence ends with _the Heir_ , but of course Waverly can’t say that, can she, because if too many people know about Wynonna then there goes the secrecy and that means helicopters and giant bombs and craters the size of the Triangle. Waverly’s cheeks burn as she snaps her mouth shut, and Nicole’s eyes flash with hurt.

“Black Badge, yeah, I know,” Nicole says finally, and oh no, that’s not it either, how is everything going completely wrong all over again? “It’s fine for your sister because she’s in the club, and I’m not, so your answer is to try to make sure I don’t see any action at all.” She takes another step back, and the distance can’t be more than five feet but it still tears something loose in Waverly’s chest and pulls it after her. “I can’t do this right now. We’ll talk later.”

Waverly blinks back tears, and before she can stop herself she’s got her arms wrapped around her chest, fingers digging into her biceps. 

“Hey,” Wynonna says from behind her, a frown curling in her tone. “What happened, did she give you a hard time? Do you want me to talk to her?” 

Waverly shakes her head, digs her hand into the corner of her eye. “No. It’s fine. I just need to take a nap, right now.” 

“I’m not sure how you needing a nap in the middle of the morning is you being ‘fine’, but okay, sure.” If nothing else Wynonna knows how to take things in stride, and she leads Waverly through to the evidence locker. “I take naps in here sometimes, it’s basically soundproof. You want me to come wake you up in a bit?”

“No, that’s fine.” Waverly’s hands shake as she clears a space on one of the tables and pushes herself up over the edge, curling into a ball with her back to the door and her eyes clenched tightly shut.

“Well, that looks — relaxing.” Wynonna sighs, and she passes her hand over Waverly’s head in a quick caress. “I’ll come get you if we find any drugs or time machines, or when we get hungry and order in some pizza, how’s that?” 

Waverly nods, and soon Wynonna leaves her alone and pulls the door shut behind her. Silence falls, stuffy and almost stifling in the small room, but it’s good enough. Waverly’s mind continues racing, playing out the argument alongside imagined visions of Nicole bleeding out at the auto shop and the sight of her, tired and pale and half out of it in the hospital after her kidnapping, and at this rate she’s not going to sleep until next week.

“Come on, Waverly,” she mutters to herself. “Go to sleep. Sleep is easy. Even babies can do it! Well, maybe not babies, they’re pretty bad at sleep, I guess. Oh boy.” She slaps one hand across her eyes, drags it down her face, then rolls over to get a more comfortable position on the table without knocking over a box of files.

A while back Waverly read an article online claiming that training your breath into the 4-7-8 pattern — in for 4 seconds, hold for 7, exhale for 8 — could help insomniacs fall asleep in minutes. The article said nothing about extremely anxious people freaked out about time travel who possibly just got dumped by their girlfriends and are trying to reset the day, but it’s better than nothing.

Waverly tries to keep her eyes closed normally instead of scrunched tight like a toddler faking a nap. She runs through a body awareness meditation, imagining all her muscles loosening and unclenching, and focuses on counting her breaths. Meditation is — well, Waverly’s never been very good at it, her mind tends to race the more she tries to quiet it, but thousands of years of research and historical evidence can’t be entirely wrong, can it?

Her brain has moved on to singing _Karma Chameleon_ on repeat behind her increasingly desperate breaths, and Waverly in the middle of her umpteenth eight-count exhale when she finally falls asleep.

* * *

 

The eggs explode, Wynonna swears, and Waverly shoots out of bed with a wild, triumphant yell. “Yes!” she screams, bounding down the stairs in bare feet and pyjamas to tackle Wynonna around the waist. “You blew up the eggs! It worked! I’m here and Nicole didn’t maybe break up with me and I get another chance to fix everything!”

“I’m not sure why you’re so happy, I’m pretty sure the microwave is — wait.” Wynonna cranes back to look down at Waverly, still clinging. “You and Nicole? Like, Officer Haught Nicole, the one who likes my ass?” 

“ _Nicole_ likes your — okay, no, back up.” Waverly lets go, face flaming. “That’s not important. You know what, I’m tired, I’m going to go back to sleep for a few minutes, then we can try this again, how’s that? Good luck with the eggs.”

Wynonna stares after her, eyebrows unbalanced, as Waverly races back up the stairs and dives into bed, flinging the covers up over her head.

* * *

 

The eggs explode, Wynonna swears, and Waverly pumps her fist in silent triumph and heads downstairs like a completely normal person to start the day — again. This time, this time she’ll get it right.


	4. Wynonna

On top of everything else, Wynonna can’t deal with seeing Shorty alive and well in a universe where she wasn’t there to fail to save him, and so she bypasses the bar and flags down a bored server to bring her a bottle of whiskey and a glass. Wynonna knocks back the first shot, sharp and fast so it burns on the way down, then pours herself a full glass and sips at it slowly, like an adult with normal tolerance because why not play pretend for a little while. 

She’s in the middle of staring at her glass and refusing to think about anything maudlin when Waverly startles her by sliding into the booth across from her. “Hey,” she says with a small, tight smile. “Care to share?”

“Since when do you drink the hard stuff?” Wynonna asks. “I thought you were all about bubblegum sake and all that artsy stuff you get on the internet.” 

Waverly blinks, then lets out a small laugh as she snags Wynonna’s bottle. “Wow, you really are my sister in another reality, aren’t you,” she says, and leans her head back to take a long swig. “And for your information, I drink whatever I want. The bubblegum sake is for special occasions.” 

“I stand corrected.” Wynonna tops up her glass then slides the bottle back over, though while Waverly holds it in both hands and taps her fingers against the sides, she doesn’t take another drink. “You okay?”

“Are you?” Waverly counters, because apparently even in another universe an Earp is an Earp and feelings are terrible.

Wynonna shrugs, leans back in her seat and looks out over the bar. As always she’s calculating, gaze skimming over the way that guy stands, the way that girl holes her beer, the way this one laughs and that one sneers, trying to gauge the odds that one or all of them might be Revenants. She tears herself away from her survey of the room and turns to Waverly, who’s chewing on her lip and staring out into the distance.

“Did you ever see It’s a Wonderful Life?” Wynonna asks. Waverly glances at her, frowns, then nods. “It’s supposed to be this big uplifting movie, you know, look how shitty everything would be without you, and he comes back and he’s got the wife and the kids and the stupid rose petals and now he understands what his life means.” Wynonna tilts her glass around in a circle, following the curve of the rim. “I guess they figured it would be a pretty shitty movie if what’s-his-name found out everyone was better off without him.” 

“Is that what you think?” Waverly says, then shakes her head and takes another drink. “Tell me about the other me. Do you — do we get along?” 

Well that’s a loaded question. Wynonna decides to skip the part where she abandoned Waverly for a decade and jumps ahead. There’s not much interesting in the middle bit anyway; a lot of sex, a lot of booze, and a long, open road littered with terrible decisions. If ever she tries to tell it, everything comes off as a weird, morbid attempt at humour or a dig for sympathy, and Wynonna is a fan of the first but really hates when it's mistaken for the second.

“We do,” Wynonna says instead, and she's rewarded by a bright, startled smile. “I mean you're a huge nerd who has her whole life planned out and most days I steal your t-shirts because I can't remember to do my own laundry, but yeah. You're my sister, and where I come from, we're all we've got.” 

“No Dad, no Willa,” Waverly says, a little wistfully, or at least that's what it sounds like even if that makes no sense. 

“Plus no Mom and no Uncle Curtis either,” Wynonna says, and Waverly gasps. “Yeah, the Revenants got him a few days before I turned 27. Happy birthday me.”

Waverly’s mouth turns down, and her fingers twitch like she wants to reach across and touch Wynonna's hand or some other kind of comforting gesture but second-guesses herself. “I'm glad we have each other, though. You know, I always — okay you can't tell Willa this, all right?” Wynonna nods, and Waverly takes a deep breath. “I used to be jealous of Willa, for being the Heir, for getting all these powers, for having Daddy’s attention even before she came of age. And I've seen what it does, I've seen the cost and the killing and I don't know if I want it anymore, but I thought — I always thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I had another sister, one who wasn't the Heir. One who was just … normal, like me, and then we could be normal together. Where you're from, did you and I have that?” 

Ah, shit.  

_Tick tock, tick tock — forgiven, or not_? Hot breath on her ear, creepy dead fingers pressing blunt, chipped nails into her arm through the fabric of her jacket, the scalpel stinging her skin as blood drips from the small incision. Wynonna trying again, again, throwing out every mistake she’d ever made and all the ways she’d hurt her sister and in the end she’d missed the biggest one.

_I should be the Heir_!

As kids, Wynonna had always tagged along after Willa, watching her shoot cans and skeet and begging Daddy to let her hold Peacemaker while Willa narrowed her eyes and knocked an entire row from the fence posts. Waverly had been small, and Mom’s favourite, and not that interesting because she had little legs and little hands and couldn’t run as fast or as far as Wynonna even when she tried. Most of Wynonna’s earliest memories of Waverly are of Wav running after her, crying and sobbing _wait for me_ while Wynonna laughed and ran faster. And then the attack, and Daddy, and Willa, and Wynonna didn’t know how to look herself in the mirror and definitely had nothing to say to comfort Waverly, and so. And so.

She’d already turned twenty-seven and become the Heir by the time she and Waverly reconnected, and while the past few months have been the best times Wynonna has ever had with her sister, ‘normal’ doesn’t really cover it.

Wynonna looks at this Waverly, and the truth sits sour and heavy on her tongue as Waverly avoids eye contact, and you know what, screw it. “Yeah,” Wynonna says, and knocks back the last of her drink. “It was great.”

Waverly’s mouth twitches in a small smile. “See, I thought so,” she says, her tone wistful. “And — I know you want to get back as soon as you can, and I’ll help you, but … maybe we can hang out in the meantime?”

Wynonna smiles and refuses to feel guilty about the lie. “Absolutely.”

* * *

 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Waverly says, leaning over the table and nearly knocking over the fruity thing she ordered after they finished off the whiskey. “You’re saying other-me dated _Champ Hardy_? Like, on purpose?”

“Hey, don’t look at me, I wasn’t there for when it all started.” Wynonna grins, enjoying the look of abject horror on Waverly’s face. “I know, right? He’s awful. I’m glad you have more sense.” 

“I mean, I can’t take all the credit, it’s more like I haven’t had time to date anybody since I’m always helping Daddy and Willa with Revenant things.” Waverly wrinkles her nose, swipes her finger around the rim of her glass to scoop up the collected sugar, then licks it off. “I like to think that if I did try dating someone it wouldn’t be Champ Frickin’ Hardy, though. If nothing else I think Daddy would shoot him.” 

Wynonna laughs, a sharp pang in her chest that passes a little while later. “Not good enough for his little girl? Although to be fair I’m not sure I would sic Champ on a Revenant’s daughter either — what?” 

Waverly’s gone serious again, forehead puckered in a frown. “What’s Daddy like? Where you come from, I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

Wynonna opens her mouth, closes it again, then takes another drink as that same memory flashes its way behind her eyes ( _Willa screaming, the Revenants laughing, Peacemaker heavy and awkward in her hands, Daddy jerking, spine snapping straight before he slumps and they drag him away_ ). “I don’t really know how to answer that,” she says slowly. “I don’t remember a lot — before. I was only ten, and the last few years I haven’t exactly been off doing yoga and other brain-focusing techniques.”

Waverly’s eyes flick down to the bottle, then back again, but she doesn’t comment. “He doesn’t pay attention to me,” she says, and Wynonna has to bite back a protest because what? Why wouldn’t he? “I mean, I’m an adult now so it doesn’t really matter, it’s not like I’m six years old and sad because he threw away a picture I drew for him, it’s just. I don’t know, I always wondered what it would be like if he actually cared. He didn’t chase away the boys all through high school because he worried about them hurting me, it’s that he didn’t want to risk the security breach if anyone got close enough to find out about us. Otherwise I don’t think he’d care if I dated half the town.”

This sort of conversation is pretty much the opposite of the kind of thing Wynonna is good at, but when she tries to search her memory for anything about Ward Earp that might be a comfort, she comes up blank. Most of Wynonna’s early memories are hazy, whether it’s from the booze in her teens or all those therapists who tried to convince her everything about demons was a lie, and what’s left isn’t going to help anyone feel better.

“Well like you said, you are an adult,” Wynonna says. Sex, at least, that she can talk about in theory, and while having this conversation with her baby sister does not rank high on the list of things that are fun and not at all weird, she’ll take one for the team. “It’s not like he can forbid you from seeing somebody if there’s someone you’re into. Though, given the local dating pool, I get it if you decided it’s not really worth the hassle.”

“Basically.” Waverly waves one hand, an expansive gesture made even sloppier after a full night of drinking. “I mean, this is Purgatory, not …” She trails off, her expression resolving into a small smile as the tips of her ears turn pink. 

Wynonna turns around in her seat — very stealthy there Earp, good job well done — but sees no one but the usual crowd, idiots from high school hanging around the pool table, one of Nedley’s officer taking a break at the bar on what’s probably not officially sanctioned leave, given that Nicole Haught has come in and is speaking to him in low tones. She has one hand on her belt and a full-on authoritative swagger, and Wynonna snorts as her fellow officer pulls an exaggerated face and pushes himself away from the bar under Nicole’s polite, hard-eyed smile.

She looks back at Waverly, who drops her gaze and coughs before tipping the last of her fruity drink into her mouth. “Anyway,” Waverly says brightly, and it’s a good thing she remembers what they were talking about because Wynonna’s starting to get fuzzy. And here it is only mid-afternoon. “I think — I just think, maybe, you shouldn’t think so much that everything here is great because you were never born. Maybe it’s — I mean, maybe it’s more complicated than that.” 

A recently acquired but still familiar protective urge bubbles up inside Wynonna, and she reaches across the table and claps her hand over Waverly’s forearm. “Hey. Let’s take a walk, huh, sober up before we head back to the homestead?” 

“Probably a good idea.” Waverly stands up, wobbles once, then catches herself after giving the table a threatening finger-shake. “The last thing I need is Willa to see me like this so she can have something else to hold over my head.” 

“You and Willa don’t get along.” Wynonna steadies Waverly by the arm, though Waverly reels away and waves her off, determined to do it herself. At least that hasn’t changed.

“Eh.” Waverly flicks her fingers as though shooing away a fly. “It’s fine. Soon Daddy and Willa will end the curse and then they won’t need me, and I can go do whatever I want and not have to worry that they’ll die because I’m not there to remember an obscure fact from a hundred-year-old newspaper article that blows the case wide open and lets them find the bad guy.”

Wynonna pushes open the front door, and they both blink and stagger a little at the sunlight, extra blinding across the white expanse of snow that covers all the dark concrete. “How many have you guys taken out, anyway?” 

“Dad was up to thirty-five before Willa,” Waverly says, and Wynonna raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, we were almost halfway when all the ones Daddy put down came back again. I think that’s the worst part. I think we’re at eighteen this time around, Willa’s a lot more gung-ho about it than Daddy. Sometimes I think she’s not scared to die at all.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. My Willa wasn’t afraid of anything. Not until they took her, anyway.” 

Except — no, that’s not right either, because when Wynonna casts her mind back there’s Willa, determined and glaring down the barrel of Peacemaker at a distant target, but something else too. Wide eyes and flared nostrils and pinched lips, her fingers digging hard into Wynonna’s shoulder until Wynonna yelped and tried to pull away. 

Wynonna closes her eyes, does the opposite to her usual tactic and chases the memory, and it’s hazy and does its best to run away but she thinks there’s something broken, shards of something on the floor — Wynonna’s fault, Willa was always obsessively careful with everything in the house that belonged to Daddy — and Willa’s fear, strong enough that it jabs Wynonna through the years and makes her gasp.

“Everything okay?” Waverly asks.

“Yeah, no problems, just thinking.” The chill does a good job of chasing away the remaining alcohol in Wynonna’s system, and she shivers but welcomes the flash of clarity. Some days the numbness is worth it, but apparently today her brain is opting for maudlin, and that’s much less fun. “Hey listen, do you think whoever did the thing and kicked me over here might be here in your reality or whatever too?”

Waverly stops. “Oh!” she bursts out. “Wynonna, yes, I bet you’re right! I was just thinking about the technology, but there’s no reason to imagine why the person who did it wouldn’t be here too! Maybe if we find them then we can get more information.” 

“The trouble is how to find someone when you have no idea how or where to start,” Wynonna says. Reality, ever the buzzkill.

Waverly grins at her, cheeks flushed from the cold and like a billion drinks. “Leave that to me.”

* * *

 

That night Willa invites Wynonna to spend the night at the homestead, and they make up the sofa with extra blankets and pillows. Willa even offers Wynonna extra clothing to sleep in while they toss her outfit in the wash overnight — Wynonna pretends she totally never wears the same thing multiple days in a row, since the idea of Willa performing the sniff test makes her brain fold in on itself — and it’s all very helpful and accommodating except Wynonna can’t shake the feeling that they want to keep an eye on her.

Not that she blames them. This could all be a crazy story, with Wynonna some kind of stalker who memorized all kinds of random private details about their lives so she could pretend to be a sister from an alternate dimension. It’s maybe not the smartest or most straightforward alibi, but it could be, and in this universe Ward and Willa didn’t last this long alive by being overly credulous and unsuspicious. 

It’s weird to think that Willa doesn’t trust her, but it’s kind of nice to have someone else in charge for a while. For once it’s not Wynonna who has to take care of everything and make sure the homestead stays safe, and with both Ward and Willa alive and Peacemaker safely in the hands of two Earp heirs, Wynonna stretches out on the couch and actually manages to get a decent night’s sleep.

After a quick breakfast of eggs and coffee, Willa and Ward stand up and grab their coats. “We patrol every day,” Willa explains. “And if we see a Revenant, we put them down.” 

“Most of ‘em have gone into hiding by now,” Ward says. “Been a long time since there were two Heirs alive at the same time, I think they’re scared to show their faces. Sometimes we gotta go out and stir up some trouble to draw them out.”

“Sounds like my kind of plan,” Wynonna says. She’s feeling a little itchy herself, the urge to go out and break a few faces and crack some heads starting up under her skin, but then she catches the look passed between Willa and Ward and she stops halfway through pushing back her chair and standing up to join them.

“No offence or anything, but Daddy and I like to work alone,” Willa says. “We’ve already got that stupid Black Badge division setting up shop at the sheriff’s, sniffing around for any proof of Revenant activity so they can set up a science lab, the last thing we need is to attract more attention.”

“So you don’t work with anyone from Wyatt’s time then?” Wynonna asks, even as her brain scolds her a little for only twigging now. Poor Doc, but then again she had a pretty long, weird day yesterday so forgive her for coming to some of the parties a little late.

Ward frowns, though there’s something shifty about his expression that Wynonna can’t place until she recognizes it as one of hers. Or, well, technically it must be his, and she inherited it. “You mean Revenants? No.”

Willa’s expression is one of straight-up disdain, and Wynonna files that away. Willa might not ever try working with Revenants, but she’d bet that Ward has an informant or two somewhere, though she can’t imagine what he’d pay them with. A promise of a quick and easy death into the mouth of hell? Doesn’t make much sense.

That settles the Doc question, though, and given the hard set to Willa’s expression, she decides telling them about him just yet. Who knows, maybe in this reality Doc got himself free on his own and is off having a grand old time without Wynonna around to break his heart.

It’s pretty shitty to be relieved if Doc is still at the bottom of the well, but honestly Wynonna can’t deal with looking at him right now. What would be worse, a Doc who left without saying goodbye or one who’s never met her, she’s not sure, but either way — that’s complicated, and right now … right now things are complicated enough.

“I’ll take Wynonna researching with me,” Waverly says. “See if maybe there’s anything she knows over in her reality that could help us.” 

Ward nods, and Willa turns to go with him but stops at the last minute and turns back around. “Wynonna,” she says slowly, as if she’s still thinking about the rest of the sentence as she’s speaking. “I know this hasn’t ben easy for you. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

Waverly says nothing, busy smashing her eggs flat against her plate with her fork, and Wynonna avoids looking at her. “Yeah. Thanks, Willa.”

Willa smiles, and Wynonna smiles back, ignoring the pang in her chest. In another lifetime she could have had this every day, big sister and little sister and father all in the same house, working together and killing demons, and no criminal history and years of therapy and juvie and everything else that went with it.

What would a Wynonna be like who grew up in a world like this? Was there any way that this place could exist with Wynonna in it, or would her birth lead to the beginning of the end every time?

“I know that face,” Waverly says. “No thinking. Only work.” 

* * *

 

They spend a good part of the morning cross-referencing, with Wynonna listing all the Revenants she can remember killing and Waverly ticking them off the list of Willa’s kills. “I think it’s safe to assume that whoever’s doing this to you is not going to be someone you’ve already taken care of,” Waverly says. “And if nothing else, having extra intel on hidden Revenants will make my job easier helping Daddy and Willa track down new targets.”

“I still don’t see the point of all of this,” Wynonna says. “By sending me over here, aren’t they just making it their problem again? Other-them, I mean.” 

“Sure, except other-them isn’t _them_ ,” Waverly points out. “If an alternate version of me eats a whole cake, I don’t get the stomachache.”

“Point,” Wynonna agrees grudgingly. “Unless maybe you do. Maybe that’s what it means when you wake up one morning feeling terrible, some alternate you has had a really great night and you’re left with the consequences.”

Waverly makes a face, and Wynonna grins. “What about before this happened?” Waverly asks. “Do you remember anything about what you were doing, who you were with?” She pulls out a file of thick, glossy photographs and slides them across the table. “These are all the Revenants Willa and Daddy have put down. Willa tries to take a picture before one of them pulls the trigger, so that in case they don’t make the full 77 before — well, you know — then the next Heir won’t have to start all over again.” 

“Smart,” Wynonna says, tugging the file toward her and paging through. Kind of amazing how many Revenants had been alive since the 1800s and apparently never bothered to take advantage of modern medical marvels like dental hygiene. “And only a little bit serial-killer creepy.”

It’s a good plan, even if it is a bit impractical, having the Revenants pose for selfies before taking the final shot (maybe they could rig up some sort of camera on Peacemaker’s barrel? Wynonna thinks about the logistics and almost laughs out loud), but maybe she’ll bring it up with Dolls when — if — she gets home, even if it feels like giving up to admit she might not live to end the curse herself.

A niggling thought strikes her, and hey, what better way to have weird, awkward conversations than to do it with an alternate version of her sister? Wynonna keeps her head down, flips through the files while making mental notes to herself about any confirmed Revenants she hasn’t run into in her side, and says, extra-casually, “Hey, do you know if Willa’s got any plans to have kids? You know, continue the Earp legacy and all that. Not that I want to be that asshole talking about biological clocks or anything, but it kinda seems like now’s the time.” 

“Ah, that,” Waverly says, and Wynonna raises an eyebrow. She sneaks a glance but Waverly also doesn’t look up, examining her cross-referencing with extreme concentration. “Willa’s not having kids.”

Wynonna frowns. “Really?”

Shuffling as Waverly messes with the papers, tapping the edges straight again and again. “I mean, we don’t really talk about it anymore, but she doesn’t want them. She says she’d be a terrible parent and she doesn’t want to continue the cycle, so she’s just not going to risk it.”

“But she’s making all those notes for future generations, in case she doesn’t take them all out.” Wynonna gestures at the pile in front of them. “If she doesn’t continue the line, how —“ Waverly’s mouth tightens, and Wynonna stops dead. “You’re kidding me.” 

Waverly’s thin shoulders hunch, and she reaches over and toys with the sleeve of her sweater again. “The Heir doesn’t have to be the child of the previous one, just the oldest in the next generation of immediate family. There have been two cases like that before, the curse moves down the line no matter who it is. Willa doesn’t want to be a mother and doesn’t have time to worry about it, it’s only logical. So why not?”

“Why not?” Wynonna bursts out. This is so not her business, but at the same time Waverly has gone very pale and determined, the kind of face she makes when something is a bad idea but calling her on it will only make her more stubborn. A charming Earp trait, that one.

Unbidden, a hazy, tipsy conversation with Officer Haught swims to the forefront of Wynonna’s thoughts: _I think that Waverly has spent her whole life tailoring who she is to the people she’s with_.

Wynonna sets down the file. “Waves, do you even want kids?” 

Waverly bites her lip, but when she looks up her eyes are hard and set in her face. “Does it matter? I’d like to skydive or go deep-sea scuba diving or try the national breakfast of every country on the planet. I’d also like a unicorn, but this isn’t Narnia. The Earps need an heir and it’s not going to come from Willa, so.” She waves her hand.

“There are no unicorns in Narnia,” Wynonna says, and she doesn’t mean it to come out accusing except it does anyway. “No, look, I’m not trying to be annoying, I just — you get to have a life, you know? You should be able to do what you want and make decisions that aren’t just about the Earps and Willa and Revenants and who knows what else.” And you know what, screw it. Good advice is good advice. “You shouldn’t have to spend your whole life tailoring yourself to the people you’re with.” 

At the start of Wynonna’s little speech Waverly pulled her face into a defensive frown, but at the end she jumps a little and sits back. “You know, you’re not the first person to say that to me.” 

“Yeah?” Wynonna knows better than to push too hard after getting her point across, and she gives Waverly a small smile. “That other person sounds pretty smart, maybe you should listen. Unless it was, like, a weird Rev-head therapy session, like one of those Stockholm Syndrome things where you get kidnapped and start getting real chummy with the Revenant before someone shows up to save you, in which case please do not.” 

“Definitely not anything like that,” Waverly says, then balls up a scrap of paper and lobs it at Wynonna’s head. “And what kind of weirdly specific scenario is that? What do I do over in your reality?”

“You’re very friendly, that’s all I’m saying,” Wynonna says, throwing the paper back. It bounces off Waverly’s forehead, and Waverly makes a face but the sour expression has lifted just a little. “Anyway, just … don’t start buying any baby names books too soon, that’s all I’m saying.” 

“Sure, Wynonna, I’ll get right on that.” Waverly rolls her eyes and ducks her head, but it’s too late because Wynonna caught the hint of a grin. “Or get right on — not getting on that. Whatever, you know what I mean.” 

* * *

 

Wynonna’s head has slowly slipped down from her hand to her forearm to the crook of her elbow, and the urge to whine and demand sympathy like a toddler is rising when she slides a paper sideways and uncovers the photograph underneath. “Wait!” she says, sitting up. “Wait, this face, I remember this face! I mean, everything was super hazy and I don’t have a lot of the details, but I swear I’ve seen this one.” 

Waverly takes the paper, a scan of an old newspaper that had been digitally retouched and printed out. “Clara Williams,” she says, and reaches into another pile to pull out the corresponding biography. “Oh, I remember her! She claimed she could see the future, used to charge people a lot of money to tell them about the harvest or whether their babies would die. Wyatt had her arrested after she told a man his wife would cheat on him.”

“Let me guess.” Wynonna leans back, rests her hands over her eyes. “Buddy went and shot his wife before she’d had the chance to cheat with anybody.”

“Bingo. Clara Williams was eventually hanged for witchcraft, the usual story.” 

“Guess she didn’t see that coming,” Wynonna says, only to jump when Waverly groans and kicks her under the table. “What? Come on, I had to, letting that opportunity pass would’ve been a crime in and of itself.” 

Waverly rolls her eyes and doesn’t comment. “Anyway, if that’s who you saw then we have a lead, though it’s not really the same thing. You know, seeing the future, alternate realities, those are usually two different kinds of hokum.” 

“Yeah, but that’s the best we’ve got so far, right?” Wynonna points out. “Come on, let’s go see if we can find her, pay her a little visit.” 

“Shouldn’t we tell Daddy and Willa, wait for them to handle it?” Waverly asks, but there’s a light in her eyes, and she folds up the photo and slides it into the pocket of her jeans.

“Do _you_ want to wait for Daddy and Willa?” Wynonna counters. “Come on, let’s have a little adventure, just the two of us. All this paperwork is driving me crazy.” 

Waverly grins and bounces on her toes. “I’ll grab my coat.”

“Atta girl.” Wynonna socks Waverly on the arm as she darts past, and Waverly shoots her a wide, open smile. “Let’s go make a mess.”


	5. Waverly

Nicole doesn’t yelp and drop her coffee mug when she steps out of her apartment building and nearly runs into Waverly Earp, but it’s a near thing. Lucky all that hazing at the police academy was good for something, because she gets a good grip on her mug and gives Waverly her best smile. “Hey Wave, you’re up early,” she says. Then she gets a second look, the dark circles and wide, white-rimmed eyes, and Nicole stops. “Everything okay?”

“Call in sick,” Waverly bursts out. Her hands twitch like she wants to grab Nicole by the front of the jacket for extra dramatic effect but stops herself just in time. “I know, I know, but tell Nedley you’re having lady troubles, Chrissy used to get real bad cramps in high school so he’ll believe you and not ask too many questions. Call Nedley and take the day off and let’s just have some time together, you and me.” 

Nicole tries not to frown, but her eyebrows pull together anyway. “Wave, I can’t just call in to work because I feel like it, it’s not like —“

“If you say ‘crime doesn’t take the day off’ one more time,” Waverly snaps, and Nicole jerks back, stung and — if she’s being honest — a little annoyed. Waverly runs a hand down her face. “Sorry, I — I didn’t mean that, I just, I’ve had a really long day, and what I really want is to take today off and curl up with my girlfriend and her cat and not have to worry about anything for a little while. That’s all. Please?”

Waverly’s had a hard go of it recently, since she lost her job at Shorty’s after the takeover and her friend Doc skipped town in his horrendous and probably illegally acquired pink Cadillac. Still, today is more wild and wired than Nicole has ever sen her, and that includes after stabbing a murderous fake stripper with a pair of scissors. “Why don’t we get together after work?” Nicole suggests, reaching over to brush the ends of Waverly’s braid back from her shoulder. “We can open some wine, light some candles, maybe you can spend the night …” 

The first time Nicole made that suggestion Waverly had turned absolutely precious shade of pink and all but jumped Nicole right there in the sheriff’s office, but today she only shakes her head. “I can’t. I can’t make it through another day without a break, okay, I haven’t slept in — weeks, months, I don’t know, it feels like forever — and I just need one day. One day, and tomorrow I won’t ask you and you can go to work and everything can be normal, I just need today. Just today, one day not to think about anything, that’s all I want.” 

 Nicole takes her job more seriously than pretty much anything else in her life, but the thing is she’s always believed that relationships are work and need the same kind of commitment and drive. If it means Waverly can calm down and stop looking like the Four Horsemen have been chasing her up and down Main Street since she woke up this morning, Nedley can let one of his other dipshit officers cover the beat today.

“Okay,” Nicole says, and when Waverly nearly collapses she knows she made the right choice. The last time Waverly looked anything close to this close to snapping had been when Nicole recounted her kidnapping in the hospital. The street is empty, no one on the long stretch of sidewalk on either side, and Nicole leans down and presses a light kiss to Waverly’s lips before pulling back. “Let me call Nedley right now and then we can go in and relax, how’s that?” 

Waverly nods, and she closes her eyes and leans against the wall while Nicole pulls up Nedley’s number on her phone. She can’t bear to lie, just tells him she’s taking a personal day, and Nedley doesn’t question or give her a hard time. He’s probably glad she’s not coming in for once, it’s coming up to the end of the year and Nicole hasn’t used a single day since she got here. For a boss who peaces out at 4pm every day to drink with the locals, having a deputy who never calls in sick probably makes him look bad.

Once she’s done, Nicole slips her phone into her pocket and punches in her code into the keypad by the front door. “Hey,” she says, nudging Waverly when she doesn’t move. “Let’s get you upstairs, huh?”

Waverly holds onto the banister with both hands, walking hand over hand with each step like she’s physically pulling herself up. The band of worry around Nicole’s chest pulls tighter, and she slips an arm around Waverly’s waist and helps hold her up. Once they’re upstairs Furiosa makes a rush for the door like she always does, hissing in case Nicole has lost her mind and brought a man over for once, and Nicole blocks the gap with her foot until the cat backs off. After that she helps Waverly peel off her jacket, hangs up their coats and locks the door behind her, then tugs Waverly over to the couch and pulls her in for a hug.

Waverly folds herself into Nicole’s arms with a low whimper, and Nicole rubs a hand over her back and hopes the concern isn’t making her heartbeat speed up. “Do you want to talk about it?” Nicole asks, just in case.

“I tried that,” Waverly says, flat and exhausted. “And it’s — fine, you’re usually very understanding, but today I’d rather just cuddle and not think about anything.”

“No thinking, huh,” Nicole says lightly, and this is a touchy area because she’s heard what Champ Hardy considers adorable and sexy come-ons, and the last thing she wants to do is channel The Dreaded Ex, but sometimes an opening is an opening. “I think we can arrange that.”

Waverly looks up at her and smiles, and even with the bloodshot eyes and hollow cheeks she’s so beautiful that Nicole’s chest lurches. “It’s like you read my mind,” Waverly says, and leans up to kiss her.

* * *

Waverly has lost count of the loops, all the times she’s tried to save Nicole, stop the fight down at the auto shop, find the drug runners, locate the lab where they’ve set up their manufacturing, tell Nicole everything — not tell Nicole everything — and she’s handling it all right, really. Waverly is not about to try to fix every problem in town or take time off to become a master at piano or pop caffeine pills so she can stay awake for three days and hop on a bus to somewhere that will take her skydiving. The idea of no consequences might be enticing, but it’s also exhausting because it’s an illusion. This isn’t real, not forever, and she can’t start thinking about life as a video game where nothing counts because this might be the time that something does.

It’s funny, but Waverly misses the ability to nap more than anything. She wakes up every morning with her mind convinced she slept, sure, but she hasn’t actually been able to rest in a way she feels in her gut since the first time. No matter how tired, how much she wants to close her eyes for a few minutes and give in, Waverly jolts back awake in her bedroom with the eggs exploding if she even fades for a moment. 

That was real fun the day Waverly decided to rest and hang out with Nicole, since the sex and afterglow cuddling left her sleepy and pliant but she refused to let it be over just like that. Instead she’d forced herself awake and ignored Nicole’s concerned looks to take a long shower instead. Her muscles unkinked a little under the hot spray, and it didn’t help the headache pounding behind her eyes but it had been better than nothing.

She misses Doc too, which is stupid, because he sure doesn’t miss her. He got in his car and he drove away and that was all Waverly’s idea, isn’t that genius, and now the one person who actually seemed to understand her, for all his lies and hedging and emotional constipation, now he’s gone too. Waverly imagines telling him about her predicament; imagines the rise of his eyebrows and the tilt of his head, the slow drawl as he says something like, _Well, I don’t understand the day’s connection to our friend the woodchuck, but I do recognize when a young lady needs a drink._

“Hey, you okay?” Wynonna asks, touching Waverly’s shoulder. At least by now Waverly has the explanation down to less than a minute; she’s seen every incarnation of the conversation and convinces Wynonna by parroting her words at the exact same time as Wynonna says them, and Dolls by telling him his worst fear, his guilty pleasure, and his third-grade teacher’s name, facts chosen by Dolls in an early loop to prove the truth to his later selves.

“Mm.” Waverly rubs a hand across her eyes. “I’m just tired. Did you know I’ve seen you die three times?”

Wynonna blinks at her, jerks back a little. “Wait, really?” Waverly nods, and Wynonna frowns. “Huh. Was it at least cool?”

( _Wynonna lying on the sidewalk in front of the auto shop, face frozen in shock as blood pools slowly behind her head into the cracked concrete, a small trickle from the bullet hole in her forehead. Wynonna, froth at the corners of her mouth from the syringe full of Revenant rage-drug jammed into her neck, bloodshot eyes wide and lips pulled back from bare teeth in a grim rictus. Wynonna crumpled on the road, limbs akimbo and blood pooling as the car that hit her speeds off, the tires leaving red smears across the asphalt.)_

“Sure, Wynonna,” Waverly says with a smile that feels as though it’s going to tear through her cheeks. “Very cool. Real slow-motion action hero stuff.” 

Wynonna gives Waverly a sharp look that says she’s not fooling anyone, but doesn’t ask for details or say anything to catch her out in a pretty terrible attempt at a lie. Whether that’s for her own comfort or for Waverly’s is unclear, though really, either way. “Well I’m not going to die again, okay? Dolls managed to get a whole case of some of that stuff and he’s trying to analyze it now. You and me, all we need to do is hang tight for a little bit.”

For once it’s Waverly’s turn to lean on Wynonna and thunk her forehead against her sister’s shoulder as Wynonna pats the back of her head. “It’s really hard,” Waverly says. “I’ve been trying to stay me — I’m supposed to be cheerful and optimistic and never give up, but I’ve done this so many times and nothing seems to work.” 

“It would definitely be easier if we had a bit more time for the lab results to come in,” Wynonna agrees. No matter what Dolls tries or who he attempts to cajole, bribe or threaten, none of the Black Badge techs will get results any faster than 48 hours, and a few times Wavely tried to stay awake long enough to wait for it but never actually made it. That’s why this time around it’s Dolls with a homebrew chemistry set, trying to break down the components of the Revenant drug behind the locked doors of his office.

Waverly makes a mental checklist of this loop like she always does to make sure she hasn’t only thought about or remembered doing something that she didn’t actually get to this time around. This time Waverly avoided all the puddles and icy patches on the road, stopped the dog from darting into the road and causing an accident when the driver swerved to miss him, and half a dozen dumb maintenance things that she keeps swearing she won’t bother with next time and then keeps doing anyway. Waverly also called in the disturbance at the auto shop before it actually happened, so that Nicole arrived as things were ramping up but before anyone was reaching for their guns, and she brought back a whole batch of contraband that Dolls immediately whisked out of sight. She also briefed Dolls on the tests he tried on the previous loops so that he doesn’t repeat himself.

Now it’s waiting time, and Waverly continues leafing through her ever-present and seemingly never-shrinking pile of Revenant biographies, in the hope that maybe this time some new information will pop out at her. Even though every resource she’s ever found about concentration and rest recommends naps as a way to increase mental acuity, and at this point Waverly could probably see a giant, red-lettered headline with the Revenant’s name and current address and skim right over it.

Dolls opens the door from his office and sticks his head out into the hall. “Hey. Get in here, I think I’ve figured it out.” 

There’s a weird look on his face, like he isn’t sure whether to celebrate or wash his hands, and Waverly exchanges glances with Wynonna as they slip inside. “What’s up?” Wynonna asks. “You figure out who made our super-meth?”

“Not exactly.” Dolls slides over a notebook full of scrawled diagrams. Waverly glances over them, but while she might have taken a few courses on historical alchemy and folk medicine, advanced chem is not her forte. “Based on everything I’ve seen here and what Waverly has told me from previous loops, I’m not sure this drug was ever meant to cause this sort of effects.”

“What’s it meant to do, then?” Wynonna asks. She takes the notes and makes a face at them, shoving them back across the table. “You tell me it’s supposed to be a cure for heart disease or cancer and I’m going to start laughing.”

“No, from what I can tell it’s meant to have a dual purpose,” Dolls says. “One psychotropic and one, ah, physiological.” 

Waverly’s still frowning at the notes when Wynonna stops dead. “Wait, I know that face, that’s your ‘I don’t want to talk about sex’ face. Are you telling me that what we have here is some kind of super-viagra gone wrong?”

Waverly chokes on a sputter of laughter, but Dolls only looks pained. “I think so,” he says. “When I broke it down I found pyschoactive alkaloids and phosphodiesterase inhibitors.”

“Psychoactive alkaloids?” This time it’s Wynonna’s turn to frown. “So someone wanted to get horny and have fancy hallucinations at the same time? How does that end up creating Revenant meth-heads?”

“I never said it was actually meth,” Dolls says patiently. “I said the Revenants who took it showed similar symptoms to meth users, with high rates of aggression and incidents of assault. Maybe something about Revenant biochemistry makes the drugs interact differently than they do in humans. What we do know is there’s not enough data to figure out what the drug was meant to do, given that any non-Revenant who took it suffered a massive drop in blood pressure followed by immediate heart failure. Likely as a result of whatever else was added to the drug to try to get it to have the right effect on Revenant physiology.”

“So all we need to do is find somebody whose idea of a good time is to chow down on half a bottle of Viagra and a bunch of cactus?” Wynonna wrinkles her nose. “Sounds like a fun Saturday night.”

“No, it makes sense,” Waverly says slowly. Dolls and Wynonna both turn to stare at her, but her mind keeps spinning and she’s tired enough that she no longer cares about things like logic and probability. She flips through her files and slides forward a photograph. “Look. This is Oswald Newman, arrested and hanged for the murder of half a dozen prostitutes in Purgatory. He was one of the town’s biggest playboys back in his day, and he went on record before his execution saying that he welcomed death because, and I quote, ‘All the friskiest fillies wait for me in hell’.”

“Charming,” says Dolls in a flat voice. “What’s this have to do with our drug bust?”

“Well, what if you were a man who’d spent his entire adult life seducing women, only to come back as a Revenant with a dead circulatory system and no ability to regulate blood flow?” Waverly asks, and Dolls looks thoughtful, if a little disturbed.

“Wait, so does that mean Revenants can’t actually get it up, because I’ve been wondering about that for a long time,” Wynonna says. Dolls then turns to give her the hairy eyeball, and Wynonna rolls hers so hard it’s amazing they didn’t pop right out of her skull. “Out of _personal curiosity_ , not like, any desire to — you know what, we shouldn’t interrupt Waverly.” 

Waverly, being a good sister, does not take the bait. “We know not everyone becomes a Revenant in the same way. Bobo has telekinetic powers, August Hamilton could enter reflective surfaces, and there’s probably tons of undocumented side effects we haven’t come across yet — but the lack of blood is consistent. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that most physiologically male Revenants would have trouble having sex.”

“So you think, maybe, that this —“ Dolls glances down at the file, “Oswald Newman might have gotten tired of being unable to explore his favourite past-time and looked for a way to get his old life back?”

“It’s better than anything we’ve got so far,” Waverly says. “Who knows, maybe he tried the traditional methods and it didn’t give him the kick he wanted, so he got creative.”

“And then it still didn’t work, but the side effects were the kind of thing that other Rev-heads would actually pay for, so he figured, hey why not,” Wynonna adds. “You know what, I’ve seen weirder things than that. You want to go check it out?”

Dolls has already tugged his jacket down from its hook on the wall. “Let’s do it,” he says. “Waverly, I’d say you stay here, but we’ll need you to come with us in case you need to remember this for a future loop.” 

Waverly lets him say that as she does every time, because she’s learned that anticipating Dolls’ orders makes him cranky and impossible to live with. “Cross your fingers,” she says as Wynonna swallows the last of her coffee and tosses Waverly her coat.

* * *

Waverly had been bracing herself for something as disgusting as Wynonna’s stories of finding the legless and completely unhygienic Father Malik, but when Dolls first knocks and then kicks open the door to Oswald Newman’s house it’s almost disappointingly normal. Clean and not creepy, with comfortable if old-fashioned furniture, and wallpaper that doesn’t even clash with the rugs.

“Huh,” Wynonna says. “Well I guess they can’t all be freaks living in filth.”

“How many women could you seduce if you lived in a garbage dump?” Dolls says idly, poking through the kitchen cupboards with gloved fingers. “I assume he’s carried over a bit of professional pride.”

“Excuse you, I could seduce plenty, I bet,” Wynonna shoots back, then stops, looking baffled at herself as she reaches the end of that thought with no idea where to go from there.

Waverly says nothing, only thinks of the loop she spent in Nicole’s bed and tries not to cough too loudly. Dolls likes to give her silent, pointed looks whenever Nicole comes anywhere near her, and she doesn’t need to give him any more ammunition. “Does the house seem off to you?” she says instead. “I mean, looking at it from the outside it seems like it’s bigger than the rooms, don’t you think?”

Dolls stops. “You’re right. There’s a hidden room in here somewhere.”

“Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere,” Wyonna says as Dolls immediately starts examining the panelled walls and checking for impossible drafts. “I can’t wait to find a creepy Revenant sex-dungeon and have to pour bleach into my eyeballs forever. Finally something new to not tell the therapist I’m not seeing.” 

They don’t find a sex dungeon, but they do find a chemistry lab. “Looks like we found our guy,” Dolls says as he examines the notes spread across the table and various vials and distillation vats along the wall. “Nice thinking, Waverly, we’ve got enough here to put this guy away for a long time.”

“You mean down,” Wynonna interrupts, flashing Dolls a hard look. “The curse ends when the 77 are dead, and I’m the only one who can do it. That means no live capture for study, not when you can’t promise I’ll get them back in the end.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” Dolls says. “For now, Waverly should head back home. You know enough that if something goes wrong you can bring Wynonna and me here next time without much trouble.” 

Waverly almost argues, but Dolls has his don’t-mess-with-me face and it’s easier not to bother when she can always wake up the next morning and try again. She leaves Wynonna and Dolls in the lab, and she’s halfway to the front door when she turns a corner and runs straight into Oswald Newman himself.

“Well, well,” he drawls, and Waverly lets out a shriek and stumbles back. “It looks like I have myself a little home invasion. Why don’t you tell me what you came for and we’ll see if we can come to some sort of arrangement?”

“I don’t think so,” Wynonna snarls from behind, and Peacemaker’s barrel appears in Waverly’s peripheral vision. “You and I both know how this ends, but if you tell us what you need to know, I promise I’ll make it quick. Mess with me and I’ll shoot your kneecaps first. Mess with my sister and you really don’t want to know what I’ll do instead.” 

Oswald bares his teeth in a wide smile, but he doesn’t argue as Wynonna orders him to the sofa. Dolls follows from the lab, one hand resting on his holster with one hip cocked, and Waverly steps well out of the way and watches them from a safe spot across the room.

The interrogation itself goes about as well as expected. Dolls looms, Wynonna glares, and the Revenant grins and answers absolutely nothing. He loses the smile when Wynonna steps forward and jams the barrel of Peacemaker between his eyes, the skin blistering and peeling under the metal, but he still won’t talk.

What he does is keep glancing at Waverly, sly flicks of his gaze that jolt her every time, and finally Waverly snaps. She stomps forward, arms crossed, and stops behind Wynonna. “What do you want?” she demands. “You keep looking at me, are you — is it your fault, what’s happening to me?”

The slow smile creeps back across Oswald’s face again. “You, little filly, are sticking your nose in the wrong bag of oats.”

“Am I now.” Waverly narrows her eyes. “I’m not sure I am. You have a secret lab with all kinds of creepy chemical experiments going on. If anyone was going to find a way to mess with people’s ability to step in or outside of time, it would be you.” 

“Still incorrect,” he says. “My research has never been with time. Back when I was younger, I was looking for ways to open the doors between worlds. To tear open the veil so that we could move freely back and forth unconstrained by the barriers of reality. Imagine, being able to walk through hell and take in its greatest licentious pleasures, and then come back home in time for dinner. I only needed to find the right mechanism to do so, and my genius was strongest when I availed myself of life’s greatest pleasures.”

“What, having sex made you smarter?” Wynonna scoffs. “Tell that to the guys I dated, because I’m pretty sure it was the opposite.”

“Not exactly.” Oswald leans back, stretching one arm across the back of the sofa and crossing his ankle over the opposite knee. Waverly holds her breath, praying that whatever made him start talking holds until they get what they need. “But at the moment of release the soul slips loose from the physical plane, as it were, or at least it does with a little — encouragement.”

“The drugs,” Dolls interjects.

Oswald ignores him. “In those moments I came as close to comprehending the fabric of our reality as any human ever could hope. But then, of course, I had my unfortunate run-in with your forebear, cutting my research short. And when I came back, I found myself unable to engage in the most basic of pleasures, which curtailed my efforts to reach that ascended plane of knowledge again.” 

“You mess around with opening the gates between realities and you want me to believe you’re not the one trapping me in time?” Waverly snaps. “Just stop being such a jerk and tell me!”

But Oswald only laughs, and Wynonna raises Peacemaker and aims at the Revenant’s forehead again. “Say you’re not just a crazy sex-addict and you have figured out how to screw with reality, or whatever. What happens if I kill you? Are you going to tell me everything will collapse and there will be a huge black hole so we need to keep you alive forever?”

Oswald chuckles. “If I had indeed found a way to use myself as an anchor between worlds, then killing me would restore the rightful balance. The door would close, and anything on our side would be sent back. But I am telling you, I was not the one who placed your sister in her current predicament. Killing me will not return Waverly Earp to the regular flow of time.” 

Wynonna slides her finger to the trigger. The glowing sigils crawl their way up Peacemaker’s barrel as matching light burns its way from inside Oswald’s skull. “I’ll chance it,” Wynonna says, then, “Make your peace.”

She fires even as Dolls cries out, “Wynonna, no —!” and Waverly looks away until the crackling of flames dissipates and the last of the sudden heat fades. Dolls has a sour expression when she turns back, but Wynonna ignores him and turns to Waverly instead. 

“Time to go home,” Wynonna says. “Take a nap, see if you wake up here. If you did, we’ll know he was lying his dead Revenant ass off.” 

It takes Waverly two cups of sleepy-time tea, an enthusiastic and well-intentioned if not very on-key lullabye from Wynonna and a final desperate dose of Benadryl before she feels sleep tugging her down. As she’s fading she feels Wynonna’s hand on her forehead, and the last thing Waverly’s sleep-addled brain hears is Wynonna’s voice saying, “Whatever happens, I love you.” 

* * *

The eggs explode, Wynonna bursts into her usual cascade of swearing, and Waverly sits up with her jaw clenched in determination. Oswald Newman said she was wrong about him knocking her out of time, but he didn’t say she was wrong that someone had done it on purpose. He must have a partner, or someone else who deals with experiments in temporal disruption, and Waverly is going to find him.

“Wynonna,” she calls down the stairs. “Forget the eggs, I just need coffee, and lots of it. I don’t plan on sleeping for a while.”


	6. Waverly and Wynonna

Clara Williams lives in a small brick house with a wide porch and blue-painted shutters, and a cute blue door that Wynonna only feels a little bad about kicking in when nobody answers her knock. “You know nobody in Purgatory ever locks their doors,” Waverly points out, turning the knob to demonstrate. “You didn’t have to kick it in.” 

Wynonna winks at Waverly as she kicks aside a splinter of wood and pushes the door all the way open. “Sure, but this is way more fun.” Waverly doesn’t argue, and they step inside and fan out, Wynonna trying not to think too hard about the lack of Peacemaker’s weight against her hip. She might not be able to send a Revenant to hell, but just because she can’t kill them doesn’t mean Wynonna can’t be persuasive in other ways.

“It’s the little touches that really make a home,” Wynonna says, passing a bookshelf lined with nothing but packages of tarot cards. At one end they’re old and faded, the boxes worn and tearing at the edges, the pictures on the cards half rubbed away from use; on the other end they’re plastic and shiny. The collection is impressive, everything from the traditional stuff Wyonna remembers her classmates messing around with at parties to an improbable deck filled with Disney characters. Apparently you can get anything off the internet these days.

“I’m almost sad she doesn’t have a pink phone like those phone psychics on late-night infomercials,” Waverly says, poking at a stack of books piled high on an end table.

“Didn’t anyone tell you that television rots your brain?” Wynonna says, and Waverly makes a face at her but her eyes are dancing. “Well, it looks like she’s not here, so we may as well wait. Have a seat on this adorable flowery couch and kick back until Creepy Clara comes home.” 

They do, and Waverly passes the file of all the information she has on Clara across to Wynonna. “It looks like she didn’t have too many friends,” Waverly says. “No husband, no children, no living family. Her parents and siblings died in a house fire when she was a little girl. Apparently she was quoted as saying that if only she’d known it was going to happen, she could have saved them somehow. I guess that’s when she got interested in trying to see the future.” 

“But instead of becoming Purgatory’s first psychic superhero, she ended up screwing with people’s lives,” Wynonna says. “We all have dreams, I guess. Though hey, here it says she had a lover.”

“Oswald Newman,” Waverly reads aloud as Wynonna tilts the paper toward her. “Huh. This says she knew he’d never marry her but that she’d always have a special place in his heart.” 

“Convenient.” Wynonna rolls her eyes, leans back on the surprisingly comfortable sofa and tips her head up to stare at the ceiling. “Isn’t that the kind of thing all women tell themselves when their guy refuses to commit? ‘Sure he sleeps around, but he comes home to _me_ ’ or whatever.” 

“Something like that, though not that I’d know.” Waverly frowns at the papers, fingers tracing over a few lines of text. “Oh, hey, this says her boyfriend Oswald had a few weird ideas of his own that made him a bit of a pariah on top of the part where he wouldn’t stop shooting prostitutes or sleeping with people’s wives, but it doesn’t say what.” 

“Birds of a feather,” Wynonna says. “Maybe if this one doesn’t give us anything we can look up old Oswald and see if he’s still kicking around.” 

Waverly has drifted off on the couch, her head resting on Wynonna’s shoulder, when footsteps at the front door pull Wynonna out of a light doze herself. Wynonna slips to her feet with a whispered apology to Waverly, who blinks awake but knows enough not to say anything. This would be the part where Willa would scold Wynonna for being hasty and kicking in the door and alerting the suspect, but they’re here now and Wynonna doesn’t have time to think about what would have been the smart, responsible choice.

Instead she barrels through the door and catches Clara Williams as she’s trying to sneak back down the steps. They both hit the ground hard, Wynonna wrenching her shoulder as it slams into the frozen dirt, but while Clara struggles and tries to gouge Wynonna’s eyes with her thumbs, Wynonna gets her on the ground with her hands pinned behind her back. Waverly appears at her side with a length of rope she’s lifted from a junk drawer somewhere, and Wynonna ties Clara’s hands and wrestles her to her feet.

“Okay,” Wynonna says, after dragging her back into the house and flinging her onto the nearest chair. “We’re going to have a little chat about what I’m doing here.” 

Clara tilts her head, favouring Wynonna with a shrewd smile. “You can chat all you like, young lady,” she says, “but I don’t think I have the answers you’re looking for.” 

“What about your boyfriend, Oswald Newman?” Waverly interjects, and Wynonna bites back a triumphant _ha!_ when Clara’s eyes widen, just a little. “Does he know what happened to Wynonna?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know who this Wynonna is,” Clara says, and she might have startled when they said Oswald’s name but she doesn’t read like she’s lying now. “And neither, I’d wager, does Oswald. In fact…” Her eyes meet Wynonna’s, and they’re sharp and intent and Wynonna reaches for Peacemaker without thinking before her hand slaps against her empty thigh. “I’d wager you don’t belong here at all.”

“Holy shit,” Waverly says. “Wynonna, we need to bring her in and find Oswald Newman right now.” 

“Way ahead of you, baby sister,” Wynonna says, and reaches down to pull Clara Williams to her feet.

 

* * *

 

By this point Waverly has her explanation speech memorized, so it doesn’t take much to convince Dolls and Wynonna to head to Oswald Newman’s house and pick him up. It takes longer for Wynonna to promise not to shoot him in the head and for Dolls to agree to return to examine the lab later rather than file a full proper report and confiscate all material immediately, but eventually they both stop arguing and take her advice.

Waverly puts in the call to Nedley’s office about trouble brewing at the auto shop and then dials in an anonymous tip about suspicious teenagers lurking in front of the general store to lure Nicole into a harmless pass-by in the meantime, and runs out to save the dog from the car and stop Mrs. Jackson from slipping on the ice and breaking her hip. By the time Wynonna and Dolls get back with Oswald in handcuffs, Waverly has finished all the necessary do-gooding as well as her supplementary research, and has collapsed back at the office with a cup of espresso strong enough she practically has to chew it.

“You know, I’ve heard that coffee tastes better with water in it,” Dolls quips as he exits the holding cell and catches a glimpse of Waverly’s mug.

Waverly smiles and swallows the last of the bitter sludge. “Is he ready for questioning?”

“You know what you’re doing?” Dolls asks, though it’s a confirmation and not a challenge for once, and for that Waverly is glad. “Wynonna and I will be in the room in case he tries anything, so don’t worry.” 

“I’m not,” Waverly says, and she picks up a file of papers and holds it to her chest as she follows Dolls to the interrogation room.

Oswald Newman reclines in his chair as best he can with his hands cuffed to the table, and he doesn’t flinch as Wynonna parks herself on the far corner with Peacemaker draped across her lap. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of this little meeting?” he asks in a casual drawl.

“We know you’re the one distributing the drug around Purgatory,” Dolls says. “We found your lab, and there’s enough evidence to put you away for good.” 

“Put him down, you mean,” Waverly says at the same time as Wynonna, and her sister flashes her a startled grin even as Dolls makes his patented flat-eyed smile. “We’re not here to talk about the drug, actually,” Waverly continues. “We’re here to talk about you and Clara.” 

This time he stills. “I don’t know if I’m familiar with that name.”

“Save it,” Waverly says. “I have records about Clara. About the fire, about her work. She said she could see the future, was always trying to go back in time to save her family and start everything over again. You have research into opening the door between worlds and drugs that would help you get there. I think you’re working together, and you’re the ones who pulled me out of time. What I don’t understand is why.” 

 

* * *

 

They’d dragged Clara Williams halfway to the station before Wynonna remembered she has no jurisdiction in this reality, and they couldn’t bring her to the homestead without her being blown right off the land. That put a bit of a crimp in the plans for a little while, until Wynonna recalled that Willa and Ward had put down the Tates earlier that year. Instead they detoured to the Tate homestead, chained Clara down in the basement where Mama Tate had spent her happy cannibal fun time with her prey, then headed out to locate Oswald Newman and bring him down as well.

With the two Revenants secure for now, Waverly set off to find Willa and Ward and bring them in, leaving Wynonna alone with the two of them, armed only with the files Waverly brought with her from the station. “So,” she says. “Either you two start talking right now, or my sister sticks her gun to your faces and burns the information out of you.”

“Fascinating,” Oswald says, looking her over in a way that makes Wynonna want to cross her arms or possibly wrap herself up in a kevlar blanket. “You say you’re an Earp?” 

“They called her Wynonna,” Clara adds. “She doesn’t belong here, Oswald. I can smell it.” 

“So can I.” He leans back in his chair, casual despite the chains holding in him in place. “Unfortunately for you, Miss Erstwhile Earp, I don’t know how you got here. I wish I did, or I’d have done it myself with that sister of yours. Must be a very handy trick, sending the Heir to another world and letting those unfortunate citizens deal with her.” 

Wynonna grits her teeth. “We’ll see if your memory gets any better when you’re staring Peacemaker in the face.”  

Oswald snorts. “I have met your sister, though I have not had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of her famed weapon. While I can’t promise answers, if you would like we could try to theorize, for all the good it will do you.” 

“Humour me,” Wynonna says, and Clara and Oswald smile. 

 

* * *

 

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Oswald says, and Waverly almost leaps across the room to strangle him herself. It’s not like it would hurt him. “And, by the way, I’m not talking about Clara, either. I mean both of us.” 

Waverly drums her fingers against her forearms as Dolls and Wynonna exchange a silent glance. Clara is in the holding cell, waiting for separate questioning, standard procedure to avoid giving them the chance to coordinate the same alibi. “You’re really going to try to tell me you had nothing to do with this?” she says. “Really? I’ve been repeating the same day over longer than I can remember, do you think this is going to help? I can go to sleep, wake up, and have Wynonna torture you as much as I want until I get the information I need, and you know what, a few months ago I wouldn’t have done something like that but you don’t know what it’s like to go this long without an actual night’s sleep.”

“My apologies, I was unclear,” Oswald drawls. “What I mean is that I don’t know what you’re talking about _yet_.”

“What do you mean, ‘yet’?” Dolls cuts in. “So you’re admitting you’re involved with whatever this is?”

“This one is handsome, but I’m not sure he’s bright,” says Oswald. Dolls stiffens a little but doesn’t take the bait, and Waverly only flattens her stare. “You’ve been trapped outside of time, that much is obvious, but you’re asking the wrong questions. One of them is why. Why trap you to live the same day over and over again?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out,” Waverly says. “I was hoping you could tell me. Some kind of poetic torture?”

Oswald shakes his head. “I think not. There’s no point in that, no elegance. You might go mad from the repetition, but you’d also have infinite time to learn and amass knowledge and means for revenge. And only the Heir’s little sister, leaving the Heir free to do as she pleased? That doesn’t seem like a smart plan.” 

Dolls shifts his weight, leaning forward like a cat preparing to pounce. “You’re saying it went wrong.”

 

* * *

 

“If, hypothetically, we tried to get rid of Wyatt Earp’s heir,” Clara says, “The smartest way would be to pull her out of both space and time. Trying to reset the one is hard enough, but both? That would be well nigh impossible.” 

Oswald nods, and it’s stupid because they’re giving her what she wants but Wynonna can’t stand the intellectual enthusiasm, the thought that they’re treating the weirdest thing to happen to her as some kind of mental puzzle. “Sending you over to a universe where you don’t exist, that makes no sense,” he agrees. “Too easy for you to find the ones whom you knew in your world, too easy to convince them of who you are and that they should help you, as I’m sure you discovered. It would be much more effective to send you to another world, but in a time that is not yours.”

A slow chill creeps over Wynonna. “So I’d be stuck in a world where I’m not the Heir, in a time when nobody has any idea what the Heir is or what Revenants are.” 

Oswald winks. “Precisely. That would be an elegant solution. But since you’re here, and not two hundred years ago trying to avoid being burned for witchcraft, I’d wager a guess that whatever version of whoever did this to you made a mistake in their efforts.”

 

* * *

 

“Of course!” Waverly bursts out. “You were working together — that means you could manipulate both space and time! Except it didn’t work. I ended up here, the same reality I’ve always lived in, but repeating the same day over and over. The question is, where did the rest of that energy go?”

Oswald’s smile is slow and sends a shiver through Waverly’s spine. “You are as clever as they say. Where indeed?” 

He’s not going to tell her, but Waverly doesn’t need him to. She paces back and forth as Dolls and Wynonna both watch her in vague alarm and Oswald’s smile stretches into a grin. “You said it wouldn’t make sense to send me back in time where Wynonna was here to help me. What if you — or, some future, alternate version of you — tried to send Wynonna somewhere else, a different reality in a time when she would have no friends to help her, only it didn’t work? Say your calculations were wrong. Say time is messier than you think it is. You couldn’t just manipulate space like that and not have anything happen, that altered space would have had to go somewhere.”

Wynonna taps Peacemaker against her knee. “Do you have the kindergarten version, for those of us who didn’t do the homework?”

Waverly turns to her, eyes wide. “If I was sent here, looping the same day over and over, but in our universe, what if there’s a Wynonna somewhere who’s experiencing normal time, but in a different reality?”

“You know how crazy this sounds, right,” Dolls says. “This is if I tried to tell my superiors then they’d lock me up for losing my mind levels of nuts.” 

Waverly ignores him. “Well?” she demands to Oswald. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Oswald leans back further and rests his feet on the edge of the interrogation table. “I think you know the answer to that already,” he says.

 

* * *

 

“So what, then?” Wynonna says. “So you meant to send me back to commune with the dinosaurs but instead I’m here. What does that mean? How do I get back home?” 

Clara spreads her hands in a parody of an apologetic gesture, chains rattling. “That I’m afraid we cannot help you. And if you are the Heir in another world, I’m not sure why you think we’d want to.”

“Lucky for us, you don’t have to,” says Willa from behind Wynonna, as Ward drops down from the ladder next to her. “Goddammit, Wynonna, if I wasn’t sure of your story before, I’d sure as hell believe it now. Nobody but an Earp could possibly be this stupid. Do you have any idea how many ways this could have gone wrong?”

“A few,” Wynonna admits, but her heart is pounding too much to let her feel very guilty about it. “Willa, I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you, but I can’t just sit around and let you handle everything. I want to go home.” 

Willa turns to Ward, who unholsters Peacemaker and points it at the two of them. “All right then,” Willa says, and she reaches for her belt and pulls out a long, wicked knife. “Waverly, cover your eyes, baby girl, Daddy and I have some work to do.” 

“What are you —“ Wynonna starts to ask, but the gleam in Willa’s eyes and the heavy resignation in Ward’s tells her everything she needs to know. She swallows the acid in her throat and steps back, curling her arm around Waverly’s shoulders as her sister-who-isn’t steps in close against her side. 

“I almost hope you don’t tell us right away,” Willa says lightly as she steps forward, twirling the knife in her fingers. “It’s more fun this way.” 

 

* * *

 

“We have to find a way to close the loop,” Waverly says. They’re back in Dolls’ office, Clara and Oswald locked in their respective holding cells, and Wynonna and Dolls stand next to each other as Waverly goes back to pacing from wall to wall. “If I was sent one way and Wynonna another, there has to be a connection between the two of us and the space-time we’re in, some way to bring us back, to snap everything back together.”

“Like pulling a rubber band in two directions,” Dolls says. “The trouble is what happens if the band gets pulled too tight before you can let go.” 

“It snaps and hurts your fingers,” Wynonna says, and she points a finger at Dolls when he looks at her. “Don’t give me that ‘wow, Earp, how astute’ face, it’s rubber bands for pete’s sake, even I can handle that metaphor.” 

“The problem is what happens if one side gets pulled and the other is twisted,” Waverly says. “I mean, this is just an analogy, but if there’s a Wynonna out there somewhere who’s living one day at a time, connected to me when I’m repeating over and over, eventually it’s going to be too much.” 

Wynonna folds her arms. “So what do we do, then?” she asks. “Close the loop, okay, but you said we killed Oswald last time and it didn’t change anything.”

Waverly swallows, a sick certainty growing in the pit of her stomach. “We both have to kill them.” 

“You mean we have to kill them both,” Dolls says, and he doesn’t raise his voice enough to make it a question, but it’s not a confident statement either. 

Wynonna looks over at Waverly, understanding in her eyes. “No, she means we _both_ have to kill them. Us and the other universe that’s tied to us. Right, Wave?”

“Yeah.” Waverly lets out a long breath. “I think — I _think_ — that if all four of them die, both versions, that will close the loop and cause a snapback that will throw us back to where we’re meant to be. But if it’s not the same time, it won’t work.” 

“How are you supposed to guarantee that?” Dolls asks. “We can’t exactly pick up a phone and dial another dimension, assuming that it’s even true.” 

Once again it’s Wynonna who answers, the lines of her face tight as she meets Waverly’s gaze and holds it. “Then Waverly goes to sleep and we kill them again. Over and over until it finally lines up.” 

“Earp, can you do that?” Dolls says. “That’s a lot of killing.” 

Wynonna stands up straight and squares her shoulders. “If Waves is right about all this then I won’t remember, will I,” she says. “Besides, this is my baby sister. “I’ll do anything.” 

 

* * *

 

Willa stands up and wipes her blade clean on the arm of Mama Tate’s ugly armchair, and Ward lowers the gun. Wynonna’s breathing rasps in her own ears, the sound of her heartbeat like the roar of the ocean with each pulse of blood through her veins. Waverly has her face in Wynonna’s shoulder, fingers clutched in her shirt, but the fabric of Wynonna’s borrowed t-shirt is dry beneath Waverly’s cheek.

“Well that’s that,” Willa says, calm and unruffled and terrifying, and she turns around to face Wynonna. “I think we know what we have to do.”

It’s probably hypocritical for Wynonna to feel a wash of fear at the look on Willa’s face when her own list of sins is longer than the dictionary, but Wynonna’s particular brand of crazy has always leaned toward the kind that set fires and drank too much and did stupid, unthinking things. This Willa, cold and calculated and unbothered by a serious round of torture, is something else entirely.

Her Willa would have been different if she’d lived, Wynonna tells herself, even as Waverly pulls away and carefully wipes the alarm from her face. _This is not my Willa_ , Wynonna thinks. _It’s time to go home._

Dolls might have insisted that torture results in no actionable intelligence, but apparently the Black Badge division never met Willa. It’s less that she got them to confess or divulge the appropriate information and more that she put it all together, her mind working to piece the puzzle from their fragments of speech as Wynonna watched in fascinated horror.

“A witch’s power dies with her,” Willa says, her voice almost airy. “I think it stands to reason that killing both of them will be enough to unwind whatever they’ve done and send Wynonna back to where she came from. But it will have to be fast, fast enough that they die together, otherwise it might not work.” 

Ward narrows his eyes. “What are you saying, Willa?” 

“I’m saying I’m a better shot than you, that’s what,” Willa says. “All those years you dragged me out in the middle of the night to shoot half-asleep in the freezing cold, remember? Give me the gun and I’ll do it, you’re not fast enough.”

Ward’s expression twists into something dark and ugly, and without knowing why Wynonna feels the urge to duck. She holds it even as she watches Willa, sees the flinch that flicks across her face before she holds herself steady. “Fine,” Ward says at last, and he hands Peacemaker over to Willa and steps back out of the way. “Don’t mess up, girl.” 

Willa’s lip curls, just a little. “I won’t.” 

 

* * *

 

Dolls brings Clara into the cell with Oswald and cuffs them both to their chairs. Wynonna stands between them, feet firmly planted, and raises Peacemaker to point between them. “Make your peace,” she says as the barrel glows.

 

* * *

 

Waverly clutches Wynonna’s arm. “Hey, listen,” she says in a low voice as Willa gets into a gunfighter’s stance and Ward keeps watch. “I know — you’re not my sister, here, and you have your own life to get back to, but I just — it’s been really nice, having you here. Having somebody on my side.” 

Wynonna’s chest clenches as the realization sinks in. However much of a nightmare this might be for her, if the fix works and she wakes up where she’s meant to be, this world won’t just disappear. It will keep going on without her, leaving Waverly alone with a controlling sister and father and no life goals of her own to speak of.

She thinks, strangely, of Nicole in the sheriff’s office, of the bottle of booze split between them and the soft look in Nicole’s eyes when she spoke of Waverly. “I think you should hang out more with Nicole,” Wynonna says. “I don’t know why, but I think she’d be good for you. And, actually —“ Wynonna glances at Willa, who’s raising Peacemaker and pointing back and forth, gauging the twin shots. “You know the old well, the dead one nobody uses anymore? Go throw a rope down it, then sit and wait for a little bit. Bring a bottle of whiskey and a corned beef sandwich with you and see what happens.”

Waverly blinks at her. “Is this a joke?” 

Wynonna thinks of Doc, of how he tried to protect Waverly more than anyone else but Wynonna herself, how he’d hang out with her at the homestead and play cards while she taught him about the modern world. “No,” she says. “But I think you just might find an ally.” 

 

* * *

 

Willa fires, and Wynonna fires, and all four bullets strike home.

 

* * *

 

Waverly jerks awake, head pounding and mental alarms blaring and all her muscles aching in protest. She’s on the ground — a street, more accurately, hard and cold and wet with snow — and she’s freezing, her brain a complete muddle. “What —“ Waverly says as the world shifts around her. Her bedroom, and something about eggs, and —

“Revenants!” Waverly cries out, stumbling to her feet. Two of them, a man and a woman, together at the end of the alley. They’d fought, and one of them had shoved her, and then the other did something with a loop of thread —

“Way ahead of you, baby girl,” Wynonna says from behind her, and she raises Peacemaker and fires two bullets in quick succession, hitting the Revenants dead centre between the eyes before she half collapses to her knees.

Waverly runs over to Wynonna, helps her up, and they sway and cling to each other until the Revenants disappear. “Are you okay?” Waverly asks. “I had — I don’t remember what happened. Did they drug us?” 

“I dunno, maybe.” Wynonna squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them wide, trying to force them to focus. “I feel like I had the weirdest dream.” 

“Me too.” This time it’s Waverly’s turn to stagger, and Wynonna holsters Peacemaker and slides a protective arm around her waist. “I need to sleep for the next two weeks or something, I’m exhausted.” 

Wynonna tugs her along out of the alley, and they find their footing on the sidewalk and manage to walk like normal, sober humans on a stroll in the middle of the night for no reason. “Revenant-hunting is an exhausting business,” she says, reaching up to ruffle Waverly’s hair. “You want to head home, grab some takeout on the way, then stuff our faces and crash on the couch? I mean, if you’re that tired then just go to bed, but I kinda want to hang out for a while.” 

More than anything Waverly wants to sleep, but there are three lines between Wynonna’s eyebrows and she did just kill two Revenants in one night. “Sure,” she says. “Let’s pick up something to drink while we’re at it, I feel like we need it.” 

“Sounds good to me,” Wynonna says. “Beer and tacos?”

“Beer and tacos,” Waverly agrees, grinning in spite of herself. “We Earps know how to keep it classy.” 

Wynonna winks, and Waverly laughs, and together the two Earp sisters head toward home.


End file.
